


the heavens burn for you and I

by meinposhbastard



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: (not addressed directly), Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Pacific Rim Fusion, Angst with a Happy Ending, Arm Wrestling, Butch!Aziraphale, Consensual Somnophilia, Cunnilingus, Eating Disorders, Established Relationship, F/F, Female-Presenting Aziraphale (Good Omens), Female-Presenting Crowley (Good Omens), Hurt/Comfort, Ineffable Wives | Female Aziraphale/Female Crowley (Good Omens), Light Dom/sub, Multiple Orgasms, Oral Sex, POV Multiple, Pining, Scissoring, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Smoking, Strangers to Friends to Lovers, Terry Pratchett Cameo, Thighs, they were roommates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-16
Updated: 2021-01-23
Packaged: 2021-03-12 12:22:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 21
Words: 78,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28635450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meinposhbastard/pseuds/meinposhbastard
Summary: Aziraphale Fell is a pilot in all but experience. She's never piloted a Jaeger, although she's had the training required. The problem is that she never found someone with whom she could hold a drift for more than a minute.Antonia J. Crowley lives day by day, scavenges Jaeger pieces for the local mafia, and generally avoids thinking about the future. What future could she have in a world where actual monsters exist?Two years ago Aziraphale stepped into a bar off the coast of Sydney and Crowley knew why she was there. That was not their first meeting.
Relationships: Anathema Device/Newton Pulsifer, Aziraphale & Crowley & Anathema Device & Newton Pulsifer, Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens), Gabriel & Michael (Good Omens)
Comments: 100
Kudos: 26





	1. Vladivostok (Present)

**Author's Note:**

> The title of this fic is taken from Phia's wonderful poem that can be found [here](https://lostcap.tumblr.com/post/119879135003/we-are-older-than-our-bones-our-souls-are-comets/). 
> 
> This is the product of a long labour of patience and love throughout 2020. I confess, my OCD might have gotten into it a bit too much all through autumn and winter, when the first draft was finished at the end of summer. So I put my foot down, otherwise I'm never getting to the other WIPs waiting to be finished.
> 
> Thank you party: **Xim** , for being always ready to check for inconsistencies and plot flow as well as brainstorm parts of it. (She's responsible for the name of Gabriel and Michael's Jaeger.) **Seashadow** for the sensitivity check in regards to the medical scenes; **sourdough_pup** for the sensitivity check on the scenes regarding neuroscience. **Raisinsforsunday** for being the first to go through the outline when the fic was barely 3k long and offering the boost in confidence that I needed to get this fic to grow. **Areon** , **Y_ellow** , and **BerylRoll** for their invaluable alpha on the first, finished draft that helped me better understand the weak points of the story and work on them.
> 
> This is a finished fic. So buckle up because it's a 70k+ journey and you need refreshments and snacks galore. You're allowed only one bathroom break when Interlude comes around.

* * *

_We are older than our bones,_

_our souls are comets that bodies cannot hold._

_And all the stars we once knew, have already died._

_But god, you look at me and it’s okay,_

_that we can’t remember how to be alive._

_With our calloused fingers still gripping the sky,_

_the heavens burn for you and I._

\- THE STORIES OF THE CONSTELLATIONS LINGER IN OUR LUNGS - P.D.

**Vladivostok Shatterdome, 1900 hours**

Present time

***

Crowley entered the Shatterdome through the back door as fast as a shark lunging through a bank of fish. Snowflakes hurried to follow her, melting within a minute on the floor.

“Fuck, ‘sss cold outssside!” she grumbled and hissed, gloved hands deep into her winter coat’s pockets and body tense with random shivers. 

The top of her cheeks and her nose were red. Apart from those and a few locks of red hair that escaped the black winter hat received from the Russians, she was covered from head to toe in the heaviest and most winter-proof clothes she could get her hands on.

She took the stairs down to the room she shared with Anathema, tipping her head in quick nods whenever pilots or engineers passed by her. 

It took the Russians she worked with a couple of weeks to somehow warm up to her flashy image and acerbic comments. It took her a couple more to see that she had been accepted as a trusted crewmember. 

She wasn’t there to make new friends. She had a mission, and an extremely important one to boot. But the Russians had a hidden charm that stole underneath her skin when she wasn’t looking— or rather, when she was busy dealing with the insufferable cold.

Kicking off her boots, winter coat, knitted scarf, hoodless zipper hoodie, knitted woollen shirt, ski overalls, trousers, leggings, Henley shirt, tee, tank top, knickers, woollen socks and a big sigh, she jumped under the scalding spray of her shower.

They trained outside, and nothing short of a snowstorm— for some of them not even that— would convince them to train anywhere with walls and a roof over their heads. They were used to the harsh conditions. Crowley wasn’t. Crowley _hated_ the cold, and the only thing that kept her from packing her bags and slithering back to Sydney was the memory of her angel. The companionship and camaraderie she had going with the other pilots and some of Anathema’s lab colleagues that sneaked up on her weren’t bad, either.

The hot water melted the knots of tense muscles in her shoulders, her jaw, along her spine, in her arms. She stood there, letting it wash away the harshness of the day.

_My dear._

She exhaled, closing her eyes and letting the memory unfold as her body relaxed a tad bit more.

_Her hands were always warm and cushiony, and to have them caress Crowley’s scrawny body, the angles sharp and unflattering, felt sinful, as if Crowley, merely by indulging in the attention, was tainting her angel. But Aziraphale was hard to resist when she got the twinkle in her eyes or the determination that signed Crowley’s timely demise — and recline on the bed as Aziraphale worshipped at the altar of her pelvis, atop the soft mounds on her chest, underneath her sharp jaw, inside her welcoming mouth._

She shivered and her arms hugged her torso protectively. There was nobody pressing her against the wall, bringing her body to a fevered mess, whispering nonsense and breathing hot praise into Crowley’s skin. No one had hugged her in over seven months. No. Not _no one,_ because Anathema occasionally pulled her into one when she probably looked like a kicked puppy, but it was getting harder to draw comfort from her. The shape wasn’t right for her; too much space within her arms, between her and Anathema’s body.

It was a friend’s hug, she appreciated it, but she needed more. Aziraphale had spoiled her. She resented this when the anger came. She was angry with her angel for getting into trouble, for leaving her out, for not allowing her to shoulder most of the burden.

But she knew those were stupid thoughts. Aziraphale didn’t consciously get into trouble. 

Her shower was ruined, the scalding water reddening her skin, but within she felt as cold as the weather outside. Toweling herself off and putting on her fluffiest pyjamas, she came back into the main room, picking up her discarded clothes.

“I thought you were having someone over,” Anathema said from the desk where she was poring over some graphics and making notes.

Crowley lifted an eyebrow. Anathema gave her a once-over.

“Yeah, maybe not.”

“Anything?” Crowley asked as always, knowing that if she didn’t divert Anathema’s attention she’d start asking stupid questions about her well-being. She was _fine._

“Well,” she looked over her graphs, her fingers playing with the pen, “there might be _some_ thing. But we’re not sure. Tomorrow we’ll run some more tests and we hope we’ll get the green light to continue with some volunteer pilots.”

“I volunteer.”

“Your graph is used as comparison alongside Aziraphale’s.” Crowley pressed her lips in a grimace. “It’d be useless testing on you.”

“Thank you.”

She rolled her eyes. “Stop being so dramatic. You know what I mean.”

Crowley’s attention shifted and caught Aziraphale’s name on one of the graphs. In two steps she was right next to Anathema.

“Are these—”

“Yes, they are.”

She pored over them, even though she didn’t know how to read them. Her fingers skimmed over the lines.

“It’s your last neural handshake,” Anathema said softly. “When you two went to battle that thing.”

“Didn’t you do tests on that Kaiju brain back then?”

“We did, but we found nothing. Useless brain tissue. And slimy to boot.” She wrinkled her nose.

Her fingers lingered over the scraggly line that belonged to Aziraphale, almost juxtaposed over Crowley’s.

“She was fine when we got back,” Crowley began. “There was nothing wrong with her mentally or physically. Nothing pinged me— I should’ve paid more attention.”

“Hey, no,” Anathema said, hand covering Crowley’s. “None of that. They tested you both afterwards. Nothing was amiss.”

Crowley took her hand back with something akin to fury. “Then why did that happen to her? What the _fuck_ happened during that mission? She’d been with me the whole time! The damage had mostly been external on the Jaeger. Nothing got into our cockpit.” She whirled towards Anathema. “What if something was faulty with the tech? Our helmets? The neural—”

Anathema stood up and took hold of Crowley’s shoulders. “You were debriefed. We had every millisecond of your neural handshake recorded. If something was wrong with the tech, we would’ve known.” Then softly, “it would have affected you, too.”

Crowley’s head hung. “She’d have tried to protect me,” she whispered.

“You have to be strong, Crowley,” she said, determination making her voice feel like cool steel against Crowley’s weak body. “You need only to hold out for a little while more. We’ll soon be back to Sydney.”

Slowly, almost as if she didn’t believe her, Crowley lifted her eyes. There was no trace of pity or that false positivity people had in the face of someone struggling to see beyond their anxieties. Anathema radiated surety and determination.

Just like her angel did when Crowley doubted. 

_If you don’t trust the readings, trust me, my dear._

Her vision blurred, but she saw Anathema’s features soften into a fond smile.

“C’mere, you tall mess.”

Crowley was pulled into a hug. She had to slouch as Anathema’s head only reached Crowley’s chest, and even then her head hung, not quite reaching Anathema’s shoulder.

“‘M not,” she mumbled, accepting the hug, even though Anathema was more or less as thin as Crowley. She missed her angel’s comfortable curves dearly. “Only angel can call me that,” she sniffled.

“There, there, you tall baby.”

Crowley pinched her right under the bra and Anathema yelped, buckling into Crowley. They both laughed and stood like that for a while longer, drawing comfort from each other.


	2. The second time (Past)

**Sydney Shatterdome, 1400 hours**

Twenty-four months ago.

A bar.

***

The first thing Crowley saw of Marshal were the stars sewn on top of her shoulders, then the medals on her left lapel; four and fully on display. Then her face, impassive, but there was a set to her jaw, as her eyes swiped the room once, that made her look as if she had important business to attend to. That or she was en route to kill someone. Difficult to distinguish between the two.

She saw all of that through the mirror behind the shelves filled with various strong and weak spirits. 

A hush fell over the bar for a few seconds. There were few people in Sydney who didn’t know who Marshal was or how she looked. Then the noise picked up again, this time laced with hateful and insulting words spat at her. She moved inside from the bar entrance, her military boots making dull, full sounds against the floorboards, unheeding of the chatter. And now that the marshal was approaching the bar, and subsequently Crowley, she caught sight of another person walking right at her superior’s heels.

A familiar person who she never thought she’d see.

Scratch that. She _hoped_ she’d never see, because she was trouble. Oh, a world of trouble and Crowley prided herself at being adept at avoiding that.

The second woman had a stocky build — pale blonde bangs curling around her eyes, covering her eyebrows, the length of the wavy ponytail disappearing behind her wide shoulders — but she looked soft from certain angles. Approachable. _Breakable._ But Crowley knew, even though she had only been in the pilot’s presence for less than an hour several days ago. Those bangs and that cherubic, amiable face, cheeks rosy with sun, were deceiving. 

There was a command to her stance, her feet carrying her build in such a way as to make alarms tingle in the back of Crowley’s head. If she made any sudden moves towards this pilot, she would find herself admiring the ceiling, most probably from between her legs, knee crushing her sternum.

And those eyes, steady and endless, focused solely on her and prepared to swallow Crowley up the moment she gave an inch. That would not be within the realms of possibilities. They’d both see: Crowley was made from a sturdier and stubborner cloth than the majority.

Even though she appreciated the imposing sight that Marshal made in that way one appreciated art — or a wild predator while sleeping — her eyes kept straying in the mirror back towards the shorter woman who stopped half a step behind her superior. 

Shin-high boots, black and looking as if they were hiding various small-size weapons barely peeked from between the stools at the bar. What Crowley could see were the green tactical trousers that hugged her generous hips and rib-crushing thighs, stretchy enough to allow for a sudden kick or split. The tags were resting atop her full breasts, a green tank top delineating every curve in a way that allowed more range as it didn’t cling to her arms. 

Nice contrast between strong arms and soft chest. But no soft curve or smile would make Crowley let her guard down. She knew what this pilot was capable of. So no, she wasn’t going to take her eyes off her.

She took a swig of her beer. She’d prefer wine, but this was the best she could get in such a seedy, rundown bar off the Sydney coast.

“Good evening,” Marshal said.

It was addressed to Crowley, but she kept her head held high, elbows on the counter, sipping at her beer as if she didn’t want to do anything better with her life. The mirror offered her enough details to make her feel slightly less cagey ignoring such an imposing presence.

When Crowley didn’t even look at her new neighbour, the pilot who saved _her_ said, “good evening, Antonia J. Crowley. We hope we aren’t disturbing you.”

Crowley took another swig. Marshal ordered herself a pint of beer and didn’t seem to care anymore about Crowley. Or her subordinate who was now blocking the view of her superior. Heat radiated in slow waves from the pilot, and even though Sydney was at the height of summer, sweltering hot and unpleasant over the land, Crowley relished the warmth coming from her. 

She relished warmth. Period.

“You most probably wonder why we, of all people, would come—”

“I know why you’re here,” Crowley said, placing her condensed bottle on the mat, her finger tracing the mouth lazily. “Have known ever since we parted ways. And the only reason you even found me is because I let you.” The pilot’s expression didn’t change much. If anything else, it acquired more crow’s feet around the corner of her eyes. “The answer’s no.”

The pilot smiled, a slow, confident smile which Crowley mostly caught in the mirror as her neighbour looked beyond the counter at the shelves of liquor stacked meticulously on the opposing wall. The bartender only interacted with Marshal.

“You don’t even know what I was going to ask.”

“No need. I know. Answer’s still no.”

“Are you sure? You could have said no to an offer that would have seen you and your family live in comfort for the rest of your lives.”

Crowley couldn’t help herself, she guffawed a humourless laugh loud enough to attract the attention of the other patrons. Not that they weren’t already talking amongst themselves more quietly than usual.

“Did you even hear yourself? Or do you just like the sound of your voice?”

The pilot straightened up at that, fingers frolicsome, but chin held high. A semi snap to attention stance, but she presented more of a ruffled feathers image than anything military-like.

“Now, there’s no need to be so rude, is there?”

“Sure,” she chuckled. “Whatever you say. Besides, you can barely scrap enough resources to keep those behemoths running, and now you’re telling me you have that kind of money just lying around to give to whoever made an impression on you? Please. Pull another one.” She lifted the beer to take a swig.

But the pilot put her hand over the bottle and slowly pushed down, making Crowley lift an eyebrow at this display of power. Her fingers were warm against Crowley’s perennially chilled ones.

“I see you’ve kept updated with the news,” she said, unphased by what Crowley had said. “Wonderful! Then you know that we’re here because we want to offer you the possibility of becoming a pilot in the Jaeger program.”

Crowley snorted. “Do I look like pilot material to you?”

“Yes.”

“Wrong.”

The pilot took back her hand and made a big deal out of trying to get rid of the condensation that stuck to it.

“Perhaps,” she amended. “You look more desperate for a hug and soothing words than anything—”

Crowley stood up, making the bar stool scrape annoyingly across the floor.

“G’day, ladies,” she said, tone on the very edge of being polite, not meeting any of the two women’s gazes.

She stormed out of the bar, glaring at the sun the same way the sun was glaring down on her and trying to scorch her skin black, even as close to the zenith as it was. 

But as she rounded the corner of the building towards a less congested street, she heard the pound of boots on pavement, the clinking of tags hitting against each other, and the huffs of breath.

“Antonia, please wait!”

“It’s Crowley,” she said, keeping her long stride and annoyed hunch of her shoulders. “And no, I’m not waiting for anyone. Got stuff to do.”

“Crowley, please. I’m sorry if I offended you!” She was gaining on Crowley, so she quickened her stride until she looked like her hips wanted to stroll, her knees wanted to rest, and her feet wanted to run. 

Half-running was beginning to be taxing on her back, though.

“Crowley!” There was a miffed strain in the way she pronounced her name. Good. “Oh, bugger. Will you stop for a second, you silly woman. I need your help.”

And Crowley stopped and whirled around thinking that the pilot really needed her help. Something about spraining an ankle or getting short of breath, her brain supplied.

But the moment Crowley faced her, reality stung her like an angry wasp. The pilot didn’t look winded in the slightest!

“There you are,” she said, closing the distance between them, smile so wide, her cheeks looked like they were folding in to hug her mouth. She wiped the sweat from beneath her bangs with the back of her forearm.

Crowley’s face puckered as if she bit into a particularly vengeful lemon that squirted her in the eye.

“You lied to me!”

The pilot’s face went from smiling brilliantly to effrontery faster than Crowley could blink. “I did _not!”_

“Yes, you did!” Crowley accused. “You said you needed my help! And you look as fresh as a daisy.”

“Oh, oh dear, thank you.” She smiled again, the flush of her cheeks making her eyes bluer than before.

For some reason Crowley’s puckered face stuttered, unable to decide if it still wanted to connect with her inner Scrooge or if it wanted to smooth the wrinkles into the face of someone who was a few years into her thirties.

“Wasn’t complimenting you!” Crowley growled. “You said you needed my help, yet look at you!” She thrust her palm up towards her, and the pilot looked down at herself as if she had never seen her own body before.

Then she seemed to realise what Crowley was grappling at.

“Oh! No, no. You misunderstood. I meant I need your help in the pilot program.” Crowley’s anger somersaulted to a halt. “You see, I think we are compatible for the neural handshake. I felt it back then when we teamed up to get out of the melee. Didn’t you?”

Crowley shook her head, even though her mind was replaying the scene and finding the moments that the pilot was referring to. She wasn’t sure she felt any connection between them there, but she did know that she had never teamed up with someone and felt so in sync with her partner as she did with this pilot. It wasn’t something she admitted lightheartedly, though.

She never clicked with anyone in her past, platonic or romantic partner. There were always rough edges that ultimately drove them apart. 

“No, sorry, never felt anything but annoyance towards you.”

Now, the pilot’s face puckered as if the vengeful lemon squirted _her_ in the eye.

“In any case,” she said, struggling to ignore Crowley’s callous comment. It was quite funny to watch, if anyone asked her. “I believe you should give it a try. There is a physical test where we measure our compatibility and if we test high, we get to try the neural handshake.”

She fished in one of her many pockets adorning both thighs and then took out a simple white card with the initials A. Fell written in black under the symbol of the Shatterdome, the line art of the Sidney’s Opera House superimposed over the shadowed headshot of a Jaeger.

“Come by tomorrow before 0800 hours. Ask anyone about Fell or the Combat Room and they’ll point you in the right direction.”

Crowley took the card as if she was expecting it to give her the lecture of her life. She jolted when the angel’s hand covered Crowley’s on it.

“Please come.” There was enough earnestness in this pilot’s eyes to cleanse the entire world of evil. “If we don’t test compatible, then I promise you won’t ever be disturbed by us.”

She didn’t leave until Crowley gave a weak nod. At the mouth of the alley, Marshal was waiting for her subordinate, gaze inscrutable and dark on Crowley.

It felt as if something important was passed down to her, but she didn’t know what to think of it. Her life felt too close to an end she never dared to picture.

***

She always saw the Shatterdome of Sydney from a distance because she never wanted to come anywhere near it. The fact that she’d lost so much didn’t make her automatically want to become a pilot. No fucking way. Go from one hierarchy and set of rules to another. Count her the fuck out. More than her having a problem with authority, she also never believed in the Jaeger Programme. Or the Wall. But she had to admit that when it was first described to the public she felt that hopeful bud tickle the bottom of her heart for a couple of minutes.

Her cynicism swept that right out the back door.

And then that pilot ruined her new job. Seriously, she should’ve left the prim woman deal with the local Scavengers (which was her way of referring to the local mafia; the chain of command changed faster than Crowley could learn names, not that she bothered), but then she had to go and _pick a fight_ with them and Crowley had to put her foot down. There was a limit to how stupid one could be. Or heroic. These days those two were synonymous to Crowley.

She was no hero and she’d never be. That was simply how she lived and she never pretended to be a good person.

People and vehicles filled the Shatterdome with noise as they went about their day. 

Crowley looked down at the card that the pilot gave her and then up.

That was when she saw the Jaegers.

She always saw them on television where she could, but never up close. They were _huge,_ one of them with its arm in repairs. She stared unblinking at them until a car’s horn jolted her out of whatever reverie she had fallen into and she moved to the side.

After that, she concentrated on finding someone who looked like they knew their way around to ask for directions. It took her a quarter of an hour to find the so-called Kwoon Combat Room. Seven other people were waiting, all sitting in line right at the edge of the mat.

Directly across the open door, the pilot and Marshal were quietly discussing, but the pilot stopped when she spied Crowley. With a small smile she nodded curtly at Crowley, then returned her attention towards her superior.

Feeling out of her depth, she sat cross-legged at the very end of the line and waited. She was still asking herself what the fuck she was doing in such a place when she could’ve been out scavenging for Jaeger parts or stealing food from those far enough on the food chain that they could spare a few items.

“Your attention, please,” Marshal commanded, her hands behind her back and her gaze scrutinizing each candidate. “I’m Marshal, the woman in charge of this Shatterdome and the Jaeger Programme. Thank you for being here. Today’s test will determine which one of you is the most compatible with Ms Fell. Remember: this is a dialogue, not a real fight.”

Fell stepped forward, her dog tags clinking against each other over her black tank top before she pushed them inside. Marshal called the first candidate on the mat and the pilot threw one of her sticks to him.

Crowley narrowed her eyes, looking with interest at the style of combat. That was definitely not what she was used to. Street fights had nothing to do with stepping back to allow your opponent to get up or even helping said opponent to his or her feet. In a street fight, one would pummel the jackass until the ground obliged and swallowed them down.

Then again, this was supposed to be a ‘dialogue’, so incapacitating one’s partner was the last thing one would want to do. But it was hard for Crowley to find the balance between that give and take that this test required, considering that she’d been operating alone all her life. Teamwork didn’t come easily to her and she didn’t know if this thing was going to work. 

The probability of it being a waste of her time just jumped to 70%.

She snorted softly when one by one the candidates received more faux blows than the pilot did or the other way around. She saw little ‘dialogue’ in the way each one fought Fell. But at the same time Crowley also saw an openness to that ‘dialogue’ from the pilot. Fell kept reminding each of her opponents to concentrate or control themselves, but there was a certain disappointment gathered around her eyes.

Like they were failing her. 

No, not her, but her judgement of them. She thought them to be the most compatible with her, but now that push came to shove, she found them less than agreeable.

The corner of Crowley’s mouth twitched as she leant forward a bit, hands on her knees when she began to anticipate Fell’s moves based on how her opponent moved. More than that, she started correcting the candidates in her mind. 

_Not that opening, she’s got that covered. Go from above, you idiot._

_Don’t charge like a fucking bull, girl! She has— yep, you’re down in one move already. Look at that stance! You’re not getting out of that hold._

_You already stepped wrong, stupid! How can one charge like a ram at an opponent who already bested you in less than three moves in her mind?_

_Dead meat._

_Useless._

_Oh. This one might be the one. She’s good at that dialogue thing. 2-2. Nice— No. Not the— wow, girl, you just lost it there, didn’t you? Dialogue! It’s a fucking dialogue not a race to see who gets more points!_

“Even I got that and I fight to survive,” she murmured under her breath.

Fell’s skin was glistening in the harsh fluorescent lights and Crowley felt jittery all at once, as if she couldn’t wait to get her turn on the mat. She found all the other candidates subpar because she now knew the _standards_ Fell was looking for and she couldn’t wait to go up there and test herself against Fell’s fighting style.

“Antonia J. Crowley,” Marshal called.

She took off her boots and stepped into the center of the mat. Fell threw her one of the sticks and Crowley looked at it as if she had never seen one before. Right, she was supposed to use that.

Once, she used a staff to fight her way out of a tight situation. She hadn’t been bad, but then again her opponents had been teenagers who barely knew how to throw a fist without breaking their own fingers, so.

“Is it done already?” She smirked, aware of the other candidates at her back. “Why didn’t you say you needed a spectator? Could’ve charged you for wasting my time.”

Fell smiled, a playful glint in her eyes, as they circled each other. “Isn’t it a nice change in scenery?”

“What? Fighting for something other than your life or your loot?”

“We are all fighting for our lives, Antonia.”

Crowley struck out of nowhere, her preferred move, the stick stopping an inch from Fell’s forehead. The momentum parted her bangs.

Still grinning, she said, “Again, it’s Crowley. 1-0.” 

They separated, Fell’s expression one of contemplation, as if she just found a side to Crowley that she never knew existed. And then she struck, as fast as Crowley did, but her stick slapped her exposed side lightly. It still made her jolt away from it as if it had spikes.

“1-1,” Fell said, a challenge in her eyes.

Crowley’s good mood was souring a bit. She retaliated with a series of rapid blows, two from above and the other three side to side. Fell parried all of them, but then she saw an opening right between Fell’s legs and with a swift change of stick from one hand to the other (that surprised even Crowley), she needled it between them and stepped forward to crowd into Fell’s personal space. Fell went down fast.

“2-1,” Crowley proclaimed from the other end of her stick. She’d be pressing her advantage now, if she wasn’t constantly reminding herself that this wasn’t a street fight.

“I see you can dance,” Fell said, getting up in a fluid move that could only be described as melted cheese on fucking nachos.

“Sorry, can’t dance. Two left feet here.”

She smiled. “You’re in luck, then. I’m in possession of two right feet. Perhaps we can make it work.”

“Doubt it, angel.”

They both blinked, caught off-guard by the nickname. Crowley didn’t have time to berate her slip of tongue as Fell charged forward with the same determination she had shown Crowley when they first fought together. 

Soon it became 2-2, then 3-2 as Crowley still had aces up her sleeves. Fell didn’t quite look surprised when Crowley managed to one-up her, but sometimes she’d caught that glimpse of Crowley doing something unexpected and throwing Fell off kilter.

They were both working up quite a sweat. Crowley would have to find another tee when this was done. And some clean water to wash herself. Maybe she could break into a house in the suburbs. Then again, last time she did that, she had to make a speedy escape as bullets were biting at her ankles.

The soft breeze following the attack cooled the side of her neck for a second.

“3-3.” Fell stepped back, doing a series of pre-learned moves, not unlike a samurai moving through practiced motions. “You’re distracted.”

Crowley grinned in response to Fell’s frown. “Sorry, got side-tracked there for a moment.”

Disappointment showed on her face. “It takes but a moment to determine the outcome of a fight.”

Crowley struck again, fast as a viper, this time using her stick as decoy for her swift leg catching on the one that kept Fell’s balance. She was down once again, breath knocked out of her.

“And it only takes thinking on your feet to make the advantage yours.”

Fell was back on her feet just as fluidly as last time. Crowley felt a bit jealous, but also much hotter under her clothes. There was determination in Fell’s features as she got into position. Then Crowley decided that she wanted to delay the end of this dialogue-fight they were having, so she began to move one way while Fell was forced to move the other.

“I’m no stranger to fights, angel.” Well, she’d said it once, so she might as well use the nickname for however long she got to be in her company. “Though I admit that this is not _my_ usual kind of fight.”

“Fighting dirty might come in-handy when fighting with Kaiju.”

“Or it might get people killed. Street fights are always messy and end with more than one party losing blood like it’s a tribute to ye olden gods.”

They were both gauging each other, trying to find an opening in the other’s stance. Then Crowley struck, going for her usual element of surprise, but Fell must have expected that because with a swift turn of her stick and pressure on certain joints, Crowley went down. But she grabbed the first thing her hands could get purchase on and dragged Fell down with her. They both lost their sticks in favour of using their hands, grappling with each other and vying for the top position. 

It wasn’t every day that Crowley had the privilege of wrestling with a woman who meant business, but didn’t intend to kill her. She was struggling against all that mass of honed muscles and strong grips, her own lack of muscles showing. She was no stranger to this kind of wrestling, but she also never learned the correct way of doing it, so she employed every dirty move she could think of, save for basically grabbing the pilot’s breasts.

For some reason, she thought that that might be pushing it a bit too far.

But it was when the only opening she had _was_ to grab Fell’s breasts that she hesitated. It marked her defeat. Fell grabbed her and they rolled to the edge of the mat, trying to get on top of the other. In a last resort to get out of the grip Fell kept cornering her into, Crowley turned around, face down, preparing to buck and dislodge the heavy woman off her back, but Fell grabbed her hand. Using her body, she pressed down along her back, Crowley’s arm twisted and trapped between them, her legs so entwined with the pilot’s, that she didn’t even feel them from knee down. 

Fell had her.

“4-4,” she whispered into Crowley’s nape, her breath laborious. Just as Crowley’s was.

_“Fuck.”_

The heartfelt emotion behind that word was partly tied to their fight finishing in a tie.

She almost whimpered when the pressure disappeared. She turned on her back, just taking a moment to breathe. Fell was smiling down at her, bending down to offer a hand. Crowley took it, and was pulled up to her feet.

“I have found my partner.”

The affirmation made Crowley look at Fell and then at Marshal who was regarding them both with the kind of face that Crowley was sure won her a lot of poker games.

With a nod, Marshal addressed the other candidates. “Dismissed.” Then she looked at Crowley and Fell, but her attention settled on Crowley. “Your next test will be drift compatibility. See how well you respond. If you pass that one, tomorrow you two will do a trial run. Dismissed.”

Crowley was still reeling from the fight, so she didn’t move from her spot even as Fell crossed the mat to get to her boots and Marshal exited the room.

“What,” Crowley croaked.

Fell twisted her upper body to look up from her seated position, one boot laced.

“You’re almost in, Crowley. The drift test measures your drift capacity. Since you’ve never tested before, we don’t have your results in our system.”

Crowley watched as Aziraphale finished putting on her last boot and then stood up, adopting a military stance, chest pushed forward and hands behind her back.

“Come, I will show you to the mess hall. You must be ravenous after the fight. They’re serving crepes today!” She smiled with a giddiness that took Crowley out of her reverie. “Your test will be in an hour, so we have plenty of time to eat and talk.”

She extended a hand, palm up, an offering that Crowley felt compelled to take as her body moved forward until her own hand was grasping Fell’s.

“Your boots, dear girl.” Fell grinned, a ferocious thing that tilted Crowley’s world upside down. “You cannot walk around barefoot or you’ll catch your death.”

The mess hall was as full as Crowley expected it to be. Fell ordered for the both of them even though Crowley protested that she wasn’t hungry.

“Nonsense. Everybody is hungry after a fight.”

They sat at a long table among other pilots and engineers and whatever else was there.

She looked down at the side of fried chicken drumsticks and mashed potatoes and her stomach gave a weak protest. The people around her were chatting away, tin mugs clinking either with each other or on the table, trays of food were shoved against each other when people sat down, hugs were exchanged and on one occasion a lone spoonful of mashed potatoes. But that one got subdued immediately and the guy reprimanded.

Her fork sank into her own mashed potatoes and she felt a bit queasy at the texture of it even as she glanced over to see the pilot politely eat her own meal.

But just as she took a fortifying breath and resolved to at least try a few bites, someone jolted her with an elbow or the corner of a tray, she wasn’t sure.

She turned to glare at whoever was that bumbling considering that the space between the tables was wide enough for three people to pass by side by side. In fact, there were three people side by side that stopped by Crowley. Two of them were women and the third was a scrawny guy who looked like he was thinking hard about something.

The one who bumped into her was a woman, tall and well-built, tanned and sporting a buzzcut that showed the dragon tattoo snaking its way behind her left ear and down the side of her neck. She was dressed in dark green overalls and a blue tee beneath that showed her impressive biceps. 

They assessed each other and the woman opened her mouth to say something, but her attention slid behind Crowley and a shadow darkened her features, then someone called (what must have been) her name down the row of tables.

“Eriiiin! Found us a table!”

The woman didn’t even salute Crowley or make any gesture other than to look forward and just. Leave. Crowley watched them strut confidently (apart from the guy who walked as if he was constantly trying to duck invisible threads from above) down the rows of tables for a long time.

“They’re part the engineering team,” Fell said, now sipping from her tin mug. “One of them, at least.”

“They keep the Jaegers running.”

Fell nodded. “Among other things. They also keep the Shatterdome functional. It is an extensive team with many branches specializing in different areas.”

“You know a lot about them.”

“I’ve been here for more than a decade,” Fell said, smiling slightly. “I am familiar with the inner workings of my ‘dome.”

Crowley hummed and looked at her meal once again.

“Aren’t you going to eat? Drift testing can take a lot out of you. It’s good to have your energy back before that.”

“Or something to throw up afterwards.”

Fell winced a bit. “Well, there is always the possibility that trying to connect with a piece of equipment will impose that sort of reaction, it is true. But it is best to at least have something in your stomach than— dry heaving.”

Somehow, the prospect of heaving up the food she might be eating almost put her off eating it entirely. Fell must have seen the grimace Crowley felt because she changed the subject.

But the subject change saw Fell asking her about the life she had before coming there — which basically meant the life she still had. Crowley was sure that she wouldn’t be able to drift with a piece of machinery and she’d be out on the streets again by the end of the day. She wasn’t forthcoming with information about her life because she didn’t think they’d matter to this pilot and she didn’t feel comfortable talking about it with someone who looked, behaved, and talked like her life was a smooth glide of well-defined objectives and priorities.

Crowley was a _mess._ In every sense of the word.

Hearing the pilot talk about training since she was able to hold a stick in her hands and not stumble over it, made Crowley feel like she really didn’t belong there. Like Fell was talking to her from a world apart. It sounded far away, incomprehensible and unattainable — like Fell.

Before she knew it, she was eating half-heartedly, mostly to have something to do with her hands and not look like she felt: lost in her own imperfections.

“So I am looking forward to being your partner.”

“Yeah, me too,” Crowley said automatically.

But when she looked up, Fell was giving her a strange look, as if she was searching for the silver lining that would unravel Crowley right in front of her. A shiver went down her spine at the prospect of Fell knowing her that intimately.

She wasn’t worth knowing. She had nothing — was nothing. If you lived every day just to survive, you really weren’t anything special. You just existed. Crowley existed and nothing more. She had no plans for the future (hah, future; what future?) no one to protect and no other person to share her life with and possibly, tentatively, make some dreams with.

She had once a few… 

So yes, Crowley was a walking shell of a person. And if the drift test didn’t expose her for who she really was, then the neural handshake definitely would.

She followed Fell out of the mess hall and through winding corridors until they reached a grey metal door. Inside, it looked like an interrogation room: a chair, a table, a device on top of it that had a conundrum of black, white, red, and green cables of different lengths running down onto the floor and into the wall with the window.

At least it wasn’t a one-way mirror. That was the only thing that differed from an interrogation room.

A man in a lab coat showed Crowley to the chair, then proceeded to put the helmet on and check the many lights on the machine in front of her. For a moment, Crowley almost threw the helmet away because it flattened her mohawk, but she looked up and saw Fell off to the side of the room, offering her a reassuring smile before she was ushered out by the man, and the moment passed.

 _“Ms. Crowley,”_ a man’s voice came from a speaker in the corner of the room. 

She looked up, seeing it for the first time, then turned her head towards the window, behind which the three lab coats and Fell were. Fell gave her an encouraging nod, her hands behind her back. Crowley wished she didn’t find this pilot so comfortable to be around, making her feel as if she was worthy of her attention. 

_“Please concentrate on connecting with the machine in front of you. Visualise the link in your mind and try to reach the other side. Don’t fight the feeling, just let yourself go.”_

She glanced at the equipment on the table, following the various lights blinking in and out, and could only see a mass of metal and wires vaguely in the shape of a round object. Was that supposed to look like a brain? Someone needed to check their basic anatomy, then.

 _“Any time,”_ the man said, and Crowley smirked at the slight edge of impatience in his voice.

Then she closed her eyes and leaned back in her seat, occupying the space on it and under the table with every inch of her gangly limbs.

At first nothing happened, but then she felt herself slowly float in a sea of darkness. She didn’t feel her stomach drop at such a notion like she expected it to. There was a metallic feeling all around her. Not suffocating or threatening her in any way, but the feeling was a bit unsettling and cold. Impersonal. No shift, no passing thought. Just — smooth metal was the best she could describe it. She tried ‘looking’ beyond that feeling, but no matter how far she pushed her mind, the metal didn’t end. Didn’t even have a limit to knock against.

It— it was moving _with_ her, she realized after a while.

Then she was pushed back rather all at once and she jumped up in her seat, blinking her eyes open. For a moment, she had no idea where she was or what was happening, but then the door opened and a familiar blonde woman rushed to her and knelt at her side.

“You did it, Crowley!” she breathed out, an awe filling her blue eyes that Crowley didn’t know what to do with. “You drifted so seamlessly that it took them a few moments to realize it! You’re a natural!”

Still disoriented and trying to take in Fell’s words, she took off the helmet, passing her hand through her hair to spike it the best she could without a mirror. She waited for her stomach to revolt, but nothing happened. Apart from the slight dizziness and feeling as if there was a window to her mind left ajar, nothing else pinged her wrong.

“You’ll need to do a phys checkup and some brain scans and then you’re free until tomorrow. Follow me. Doctor Tracy is a sweet lady. She’ll take care of you.”

She let Fell’s excitement and blabbering wash over her as she followed the woman to another part of the labyrinthine corridors. In this one, there were some doors with windows, some were plain metal and had stickers with ‘authorized personnel only’ on them, and others were white and almost nondescript.

Fell pushed open one door that had a metal plate sticking out of the wall above it, advertising it as ‘Infirmary 5’. The room was big and had medical equipment, a few steel tables pushed to the wall and three beds with curtains partially shielding them from sight.

A woman with blonde hair that looked like cotton candy sat at a desk pushed into the far wall, her back to them. She whirled around the moment Fell called her name and smiled warmly.

“Dearie, how have you been? Here for your usual physical checkup?”

“I’ve been quite well, thank you for asking. And not this time. I brought someone.” She stepped aside and extended an arm to invite Crowley forward.

“Hello,” Crowley said, still a bit out of her depth. “I’m Antonia J. Crowley.”

“Pleasure to meet you, dearie,” the doctor said warmly, and something in Crowley relaxed a bit.

“She’s my co-pilot!” Fell’s bubbly excitement frizzed in her words, as if Crowley was something she had been expecting for a long time. Like— like a letter from a dear friend.

Surprise showed on the doctor’s face. “Does that mean—”

“Yes! We tested compatible, she can drift easily and now we’re here for a general phys checkup and then we’re off to Anathema for brain scans. Tomorrow we’ll do the neural handshake.”

Crowley felt queasy at that prospect.

“Oh my, that is quite a lot happening in two days.” Her gaze turned from surprised to scrutinizing as if she could switch her eyes from seeing to scanning Crowley from head to toe. It was a bit unsettling.

“How are you holding up, dearie?” She stood up and approached Crowley.

“Fine.”

But her gaze narrowed and she checked Crowley’s pupils, then ears, then had her open her mouth, and hummed. Her breath smelled of chicken, but she asked for it.

“Well, I’ll leave you to it, then,” Fell said and stepped back, Crowley’s panic at the prospect settling in. “How long will it take, Doctor Tracy?”

“Shouldn’t take long. I’d say about half an hour.” Her gaze didn’t leave Crowley and she felt distinctly like this doctor could glean her deepest secrets.

“Perfect.” 

Crowley looked back at her, silently pleading with Fell to not leave her alone with a stranger, no matter how nice the stranger was. At this point, Fell was the only person in the entire Shatterdome who Crowley felt a modicum of comfort being around. 

“I need to check in with Marshal, but I’ll be here before you finish. There’s nothing to worry about, Doctor Tracy will take care of you. You’re in good hands.” 

Crowley watched despondent as Fell left, the door clicking quietly behind her back.

“Now, shall we sit down and talk, dearie?”

She swallowed. Did she have any other choice?

Not really. She could bolt out of the door and never come back, but Fell’s excitement and hope and warm smiles locked her knees. Maybe something would change if she didn’t run, if she didn’t listen to her first instinct. 

Doctor Tracy walked her through what she required from Crowley. She had her age noted down, then weighed, and measured her height along with her sight. Those were easy and done fast, though Doctor Tracy didn’t seem pleased with her weight.

Maybe she needed to keep a regime and lose some more? Probably they needed a balance between the pilots. One light and one heavy? She didn’t know. She could only guess at the requirements for pilots.

Then came the harder, more personal questions: sexual history and pregnancy (sporadic encounters and never penetration), diseases and mental illnesses in her family (none as far as she could remember), if she encountered any diseases on her own (nothing apart from the seasonal cold), her period (irregular). 

Doctor Tracy took a blood sample and chugged it into a round thing that whirred to life after she closed the lid. When it beeped, she wrote down the readings on the display that Crowley couldn’t see, and then turned back to Crowley.

“Well, dearie, overall you’re healthy, but you’re underweight for the pilot programme.” Crowley blinked. “So I’m prescribing you a regime high in protein and fat as well as some supplements to help you build the muscles necessary as fast as possible. You’ll have to see Ranger Zuigiberg for training. I’ll let her know about what you need.”

She tore off a page and handed it over. “Show this to Anathema when you get there. You’re free to go,” she said with a warm smile.

Well, that was a rollercoaster. She felt a bit too exposed to ask anything else, so she nodded and left.

Outside, though, there was no Fell waiting for her which made her feel more miserable than she already did. Was she really doing the right thing? Should she put her trust in these people, these strangers? Though it was a bit late for that, as they already had enough information on her to make her hesitate to turn tail.

She was walking back the way they came when she rounded the corner and someone bumped into her.

It was enough to make her lose the grip on her piece of paper and they both watched it slowly loop down to the ground. The guy was the first to bend down and pick it up and Crowley was gearing up for tearing into him if he gave her any lip because he was clearly skimming the page.

Her smoldering glare must have burned him a little because he jolted and looked up.

“Sorry! Sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

“To read someone’s private stuff. Yeah, tell that to the next bumbling idiot.”

She almost tore the page from his proffered hand, folding it in three and pushing it in her jeans pockets.

“Oh, you’re Aziraphale’s co-pilot.”

Crowley lifted an eyebrow. Despite the sunglasses covering her eyes, she knew that the message got across to the idiot fast because he was fumbling his way around his own words.

“I mean, you’re your own person, I know. What I meant was, you know, the new pilot. Jaeger programme. Recruiting. You are… the new pilot everyone’s talking about, right?”

“Who’s talking?”

“Uh, well, just the Engineer department. You’re sort of a hot topic right now. Recruited out of a bar by Marshal herself is what everyone’s saying.”

She snorted. “Don’t you have anything better to do than gossip like grumpy, old men in corners?”

He frowned. “We don’t gossip like grumpy… old… uh.” Crowley smirked. “Anyway, I saw you have an irregular period.”

Again, she lifted an eyebrow, challenging this man-boy to give her shit for that.

“So? What’s it to you?” she said aggressively.

He put his hands up. “Nothing, nothing. I just— my girlfriend had this problem when she was doing her postdoc and I remember she used to take ten minutes of her day and decompress by simply doing breathing exercises.”

“What are you saying?”

“You’re probably constantly stressed and that puts a strain on your body. Plus, your report says that you’re underweight, so that also factors in the— in— uh—” 

He trailed off as Crowley rounded up on him, fists clenched at her sides and he was forced to take a few steps back.

“Didn’t you say you were an engineer?” 

The guy stumbled over his own feet and had to grapple with his left arm on the wall to not fall all the way down. But when he righted himself, Crowley was boxing him in, trapping him against the wall. She wasn’t in the best of moods at that moment and a stranger, nonetheless a guy, giving her advice about how she should live her life was the last thing she needed that day.

“I did. I was— am. Still am. Engineer. Me. Jaeger patch. Repair. I repair Jaegers.”

“Crowley, there you are!” They both looked towards Fell who was flushed and breathing hard as if she had run there. She glanced from one to the other, and Crowley realized the position she was in and the kind of things it was saying about them.

She stepped back and pushed her sunglasses up her nose.

“Is something the matter?” Fell asked, coming closer. “Are you two all right? Newt?”

“Yeah,” _Newt_ squeaked, “yeah, we’re fine. I’m fine. She’s fine. We’re all fine. Gotta go, though. See you around, Aziraphale.” He booked it out of there faster than Crowley could see him.

She smirked, but it fell off quickly when Fell frowned at her.

“Were you scaring one of our top engineers?”

“Me? Scaring? I wouldn’t hurt a fly,” Crowley said, finding her center once again. But Fell’s frown and suspicion didn’t let up. “Scout’s honour!”

“Did you even go to a summer camp?”

Crowley fell in step with the pilot as she let herself be guided to the next appointment: brain frizzles.

“Eh, once. In a bedtime story.”

Anathema was a cool person from Crowley’s perspective. Professional, clinical, explained the whole procedure using simple, understandable terms and didn’t encroach on Crowley’s personal space at all. All in all, this appointment went smoother and faster than the last one. No personal questions, either. Well, she definitely had all the answers she’d need in the folded paper she gave her before she laid down on the gurney and let the machine scan her brain.

When she returned to the other room, putting on her black tee, Fell and Anathema were already talking about the scans.

“Her brain wave patterns are almost similar to yours. I haven’t seen this happen before. No two brains are the same, no matter how compatible the pilots are. Even twin brains register different brain wave patterns. It’s fascinating!”

“So we’re birds of a feather, is what you’re saying,” Crowley chirped in.

“No. Not really. They’re not identical, as I said. They just— the patterns are so close to each other that it almost defies everything I know about neurological patterns in a human brain.”

“What does that mean?”

“Well, for one, that you two have similar thought patterns and ideas, and for two, that your neural handshake has the potential of being the strongest we’ve ever registered.”

Crowley didn’t share the excitement in Anathema’s voice or the hopeful look in Fell’s eyes. It felt like the whole programme was counting on her to be something she— didn’t feel she was. They all expected so much from her and even told her that she was so much.

But nobody asked her if she wanted to be that much. If she was even capable of that.

“Good. Well, I’d like to crash now. Been a long day. Have any available corner I can tuck myself into until tomorrow?”

Anathema sent Fell a puzzled look, as if Crowley spoke in tongues just then.

“I’ll take it from here,” Fell told Anathema, squeezing her forearm. “Thank you for your time, Anathema.”

“Any time,” she said slowly, still giving Crowley that look that made the hairs on the back of her neck rise in suppressed anger.

“Follow me,” Fell told her when she was close enough.

They made their way to another corridor, this one trafficked. Fell opened a heavy steel door towards a room where there were two bunk beds, a table holding a large amount of papers in disarray and a tv pushed in a nook in the corner of the room, right above another door that led to a bathroom from what she could make out.

“This is my room,” Fell said. “Well, it will be yours, too, after tomorrow. Jaeger pilots share the same room for fast responses. I took the lower bed, but if you’re more comfortable sleeping there, I can move up to the top one.”

Crowley was watching Fell try to tidy up not just papers, pens, and tape recorders, but also clothes.

“No, ‘s okay. I can take the top one.”

Fell grinned, a bundle of clothes in her arms. “Thank you. Not that I don’t like the top one, but I’m always afraid of falling in my sleep. It is a silly fear, I know.”

Crowley climbed on her new bed and found the mattress too soft for what she was used to, but the pillow was a cloud held together by fabric and her head sinking slowly in felt like a lullaby all unto itself. She didn’t even take off her boots, dangling a bit over the edge of the bed, her hands burrowed under the pillow. She blinked a few times before darkness swept her over.


	3. Panic and repercussions

***

There was something shaking her gently, a touch on her shoulder.

“Crowley, wake up.”

She blinked her eyes open and blurrily saw movement on the other side of the room, red and white and faces talking. She didn’t remember taking shelter in a building with functioning electronics. Her nose was pressed into the surprisingly soft mattress as she tried to coordinate her limbs, but one arm was dangling over the bed and the other was twisted, half of it under her ribs.

“Crowley, we need to get ready for the trial run.”

That fully woke her up. In a sudden burst of movement that would have had her pushed up in a kneeling position, she forgot that her arms weren’t cooperative and thus she lost her balance and toppled over the edge of the bed— 

— and into Fell’s arms.

Well, not really. 

She fell into the pilot, all right, but Fell obviously didn’t expect an uncoordinated mess to tumble out of nowhere, so they both sprawled on the floor, Crowley on top of her.

“Sorry, sorry! You okay, angel?” Crowley squeaked, scrambling to get off her.

Fell grinned. “I am quite all right, Crowley. That is exactly what I was talking about last night. It was good that I was still nearby to catch you. Are you injured?”

Crowley looked down at her body, noticing that she was still wearing the clothes from the day before. She had a hard time understanding if she needed to make a speedy escape or she could dawdle. No one was attacking her, either verbally or physically.

“I’m okay. No bruises, I think.”

“That is such a relief, dear girl.” 

Fell looked over her shoulder at the running news programme, and Crowley’s gaze slid down the stretch of pale skin, the strong jaw, the arms, hands relaxed in her lap, fingers visible and stark against the black of her thighs, no weapon in sight. She had to blink multiple times. It was safe, she kept telling her brain. Safe and secure. But the fight or flight response still churned in her gut. 

“Oh, we’ll be late if we don’t hurry,” Fell said, then pulled something from her left. “This is your circuitry suit.”

That was when Crowley realized that Fell was already dressed in a black suit. It looked skin tight and like it was made of a particular kind of fiber, sturdy enough to protect the skin. It didn’t seem like that was all there was to it. Crowley took the suit she was supposed to wear, malleable and warming instantly in her hand, and went to the bathroom. 

When she got out, Fell came up to position the black bodysuit around her shoulders and hips. It was hard to concentrate on the other stuff that Fell was saying about there being a Drivesuit Room and technicians or something because her palms, hot and cushiony, were on Crowley’s body. She failed to remember the last time anyone touched her with any other intention than to hurt or draw comfort from or examine. She was all too aware of the places where her fingers pressed into her skin.

The bodysuit felt— comfortable. A bit loose in places, but it allowed her complete range of movement as if she wasn’t wearing any clothes. 

“We’ll be helped to the rest of the drivesuit once we get to the Drivesuit Room.”

So she was really doing that. She was going to step into that cockpit and let someone else in her mind.

Oh.

It didn’t strike her until that moment that Fell would have full access to her, more so than any tests or brain scans would ever be able to. She’d be _seen, known_ in a way that nobody had ever been able to.

She watched the broad back in front of her, the confident walk. What was she doing there? Why did she let them talk her into this? Wasn’t she just setting herself up for failure? Another one to the chain she dragged behind herself.

Her gloved hand creaked softly as she clenched her fist.

Every person they passed by nodded at Fell, sometimes at Crowley, but mostly the respect was directed towards Fell. 

Was that what she wanted? Fame? Recognition? Respect?

Not really. She never thought about that before. Her only thoughts, her only drive, was to survive in a world that stopped making sense a long time ago. Help people when she could spare the energy, and then move on. She wasn’t— this whole thing felt so— big and permanent and impossible to climb.

Crowley stopped.

The jitters were clogging her throat. The suit was suddenly suffocating her slowly, constricting around her, swallowing her up, even as it expelled the heat her body was producing in excess.

“Crowley?” Fell appeared into her tunnel vision, face creased with worry, and her voice sounded like it was underwater. “Crowley, are you all right? You’re as pale as a ghost. I think you’re having a panic attack. Breathe with me, okay? Just concentrate on breathing.”

She opened her mouth, but nothing came out. Fell dragged her to the side of the corridor, placing her gloved hands on Crowley’s forearms. Crowley looked at the point of contact and tried to _breathe._

“I don’t— I—”

“Newt,” she hailed the first person that passed them by, “get Doctor Tracy, now!”

But before Fell even finished that sentence, Crowley took off. 

She didn’t know where, but she ran as fast as her legs could carry her. Ran as if a fucking Kaiju was chasing her. She ran so fast that her lungs burned and her leg muscles spasmed from the sudden exertion. She didn’t bump into anyone which spoke of how many times she had to tear off and avoid obstacles in the past.

It was only when she pushed through a door and was out in the open, hot, summer air hitting her overheated skin, that she slowed down and steered to the right, behind a few craters. The place was quiet, helicopters in standby on their landing docks.

She sat down in the partial shade, back against the wall, and pushed her face into her knees, covering her head with her arms. It was going to stop. It was going to stop any minute now. She was fine. She always was. Nothing could get to her. She was strong. She could get through it. Like she did every time. Every day of her life.

Steps thudded on the ground, fast and heavy. Crowley stopped breathing. The steps fell quiet. She waited. Then whoever was there began walking, the gravel crunching under their boots.

“Crowley?” Fell’s voice was soft and tentative.

Now Crowley was tearing up. She was strong, she didn’t need people to wear kiddy gloves with her. She was better than this.

The footsteps feel quiet somewhere to her right.

“May I sit with you?”

Crowley bit her lower lip, the gentleness in her voice getting to her like few things had ever. Her fingers dug rhythmically into the meaty part right above her elbows, trying to keep herself together, to not fall apart in front of a stranger.

But Fell wasn’t really a stranger. Not quite like— Doctor Tracy or Anathema. They didn’t know Crowley the way Fell did. Not that it was enough, but at least Crowley felt slightly less cagey around Fell.

“No,” Crowley said at last, fingers digging with vengeance into her own skin and breath held in.

“Okay, then I’ll stand here. Do you—”

“Go away!” Crowley said louder this time, with more determination behind her words. 

“I— don’t want to.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m worried about you. Please talk to me.”

“Why? We don’t know each other. You shouldn’t care about what happens to—”

“How could I not care about you, silly! You’re a good person. You’re my co-pilot! I care about your well-being!”

“Not really your co-pilot. I haven’t finished the testing. You don’t know if we’re really compatible or if I’ll muck that up, too.”

“Too? You haven’t, as you put it, mucked up anything up until now.”

“Question of time.”

“Crowley, please, tell me what is bothering you.”

“Not important.”

“Oh, you stubborn girl. Of course it’s important! Whatever makes you uneasy is important to me!”

“Why?” Crowley was getting impatient with this running in circles. Why couldn’t she just _understand._

“Because I care about you. I want to help you however I can.”

“I don’t want you here!”

Why was she lying? The silence wasn’t even filled by the wind, just a sweltering hot mid-morning sun that was making the back of her neck burn unpleasantly.

“Okay.” The tremor in her voice made Crowley squeeze her eyes shut. “I understand. If that is your wish, then do you want me to call someone you feel more comfortable with?”

Crowley squeezed her knees, trying to make herself smaller, trying to keep the crumbling pieces of herself together. She shook her head harshly.

“Okay, then— tell me what you need. Please, Crowley, talk to me.”

“I— I don’t know what to say,” she said roughly before she cleared her throat.

“Would you let me come sit by you? I promise I won’t touch you, but soon they’ll run tests with the helicopters and I won’t be able to hear you.”

Crowley took a deep breath, and then, upon release, she nodded. 

The boots came closer, then she heard Fell sigh as she sat down near enough that she could lean to her left a few inches and she’d touch Fell.

But time passed by without a word. Crowley was still grappling with the turmoil inside and replaying the words Fell said, turning them whichever way to try and find a hidden meaning, but she kept coming up blank.

“I hate it!” Crowley spit the words out. At least it was a start.

“What do you mean?”

“I hate this, the fact that everybody acts as if I’m a goddamn saviour, as if the whole programme is resting solely on my fucking shoulders!”

“That is not true. No one single pilot is the key to this problem, but all of us together shoulder the responsibility to continue to give humanity hope and protect it from those who would see it extinct.”

Crowley lifted her head and peered at Fell from between the locks of her hair. “I can’t go inside that cockpit,” she confessed quietly. 

“Why is that?” asked Fell without much of an intonation.

Crowley shrugged. “You’ll know.”

“What do you mean?”

She lifted her head and glared at Fell. By now the sunglasses had been taken off. Fell looked surprised and, for a moment, she seemed to want to say something, maybe note on the tear streaks on her cheeks or the hair in disarray, but then her expression turned placid and open once again.

“You’ll know everything about me. Every shitty decision I ever made, every godforsaken memory of my past life and my current one. Everything!” She threw up her arms, frustrated with herself, Fell, the world.

“So will you.”

Crowley looked back at her. There was a calm and confidence in that woman that made the ground beneath Crowley feel like floating rocks in a rushing river of lava.

“You’ll learn a lot of things about me,” Fell continued, “about my past and my relationship with various people. You will know what I think and how I think about the world at large. There will be good memories and bad ones in there, secrets I wish nobody would ever find out about.”

“And doesn’t that scare you? Doesn’t the knowledge that this person— _me,_ a stranger, is going to find out everything about you? I could—” Crowley looked about her, searching for the words to express what she was thinking and feeling in that moment. “I could _destroy you.”_

“So could I, you.” 

Crowley mentally stumbled, and when she glanced back, Fell was regarding her with steady, placid eyes. There was no fear there. She was meeting Crowley head on, no punches pulled. 

“It is a two-way communication, otherwise the connection wouldn’t hold. You won’t be able to hide yourself from me any more than I will. And yes, we’ll find out things about each other that neither of us would be able to know otherwise. We’d both have enough ammunition to ruin each other’s lives.”

“Again, why doesn’t that scare you?”

“There are a number of reasons. First and foremost, because I’ve trained my whole life to become a pilot. I had long years to mentally prepare myself for this moment. But most importantly, I have had several failed neural handshakes in the past. I almost gave up, but then we had no choice but to work together to get out of that fight and I knew, deep down, that there was more to you than met the eye. After our compatibility fight and drift test, that belief cemented itself in me. If there is anyone on this planet that I want to share my mind, _myself with,_ that would be you, Crowley. You and nobody else.”

Crowley stared openly at her, even if the harsh light was making her eyes water. She had to blink a few times and get her bearings.

“That— that’s a bold statement, Fell.” The woman had the gall to smirk. “And a stupid one to boot. You’re— you’re basically, what? Gambling your dream on the slight chance that this might work?”

Fell looked at the sky. “I made up my mind, Crowley. I want to _know_ you, and you me. _I know_ we’re drift compatible. But if it turns out that we aren’t, then you still have a place in this programme and there are other pilots you could drift with. We need all the hands we can get.”

Crowley studied her, taking her words in, her resolution, the serene expression on her face. How could she say she’d be okay with Crowley drifting with someone else if she had been so hellbent on getting Crowley to be her co-pilot? For the first time, probably ever, Crowley realized that all of it, the whole situation she unwillingly _and_ willingly stepped into, was beyond her and Fell. 

She didn’t want that. Didn’t want this decision to be out of her hands.

 _It’s her or nobody else,_ she found herself thinking, the surety of those words surging from somewhere deep within her.

But was that enough to let Fell in? See her so completely in her failures and miserable past, the wrong decisions she’d made at every corner? _See_ her for who she really was in a way that Crowley had always shied away from?

She wasn’t sure she could withstand such scrutiny, such nakedness, such— 

But she was thinking only about herself. The scrutiny and nakedness went both ways, from what Fell said. If Fell could see Crowley, then so could Crowley. They’d both be exposed to each other which meant— was Crowley prepared to _see_ Fell? Was she prepared to accept Fell in her entirety? Though she couldn’t fathom her having any imperfection or making any kind of bad decisions in her life. Fell was the epitome of righteousness and confidence in Crowley’s mind. 

If she were a soldier and Fell her commander, ordering her to step on a landmine, she’d do that without blinking. Because Fell wouldn’t make light decisions and wouldn’t certainly send her people to die pointlessly. That was the kind of trust Fell inspired.

But here, in this situation— Crowley hesitated.

It was one thing to receive orders from a superior and quite another to have someone in her head, privy to every thought that crossed her mind.

“But remember,” Fell said, her determined gaze finding Crowley’s and holding it. “We all shoulder the responsibility in this programme. If you do this, if you decide to go into the cockpit, it’s your decision, but you’re not going in alone. I’ll be there. I’ll be with you for as long as you let me.”

That was when the alarms went off and the pre-registered woman’s voice requested all pilots to be in the command room.

By the time she and Fell arrived, things were already in motion. Marshall was on deck, her perfectly pressed suit and military stance an oasis of calm and immobility that stood out amongst the flurry of people rushing in every direction.

“Engage drop, Mr Choi,” she ordered, her voice cool and steady.

“Engaging drop, ma’am. Marshall on deck,” he said, probably for the pilots in the Jaeger. “Securing the Conn-Pod and getting ready for dropping.”

 _“Divine Retribution is ready for battle,”_ a man’s voice said. The way he spoke the name sounded like they were going to slay a dragon for Queen and country. Not far-fetched, all things considered.

Crowley still snorted, then looked around her. Fell and Mr Choi didn’t even blink at the name, though his colleague, a station over, rolled his eyes. 

The head of the Jaeger dropped to its body and Crowley’s breath was robbed when she saw the behemoth, how ant-like she was compared to it. She waited for the center of its chest to flare up, but apart from the headlights positioned at the top on each side of the breastplates and the ones at the Jaeger’s temples, there wasn’t any big, molten light at its core.

“Where’s the… the thing?” She knew what it was called, but her mind blanked out in that moment, so she pointed towards her chest when Fell looked over.

“Nuclear reactor. They don’t have one. Divine Retribution is a Mark V. Completely digital. Our— I mean Zephyrus Anemoi is nuclear.”

“Double link confirmed, ma’am,” called Mr Choi from Fell’s side.

“Engage Pilot-to-Pilot Protocol.”

It was hard for Crowley to describe the way Divine Retribution looked like. The ‘dome’s lights didn’t do it justice. Not to mention that with all the repairs that the Jaeger had had over the past months or years, it didn’t look in mint condition. Still stood like it meant business and could pack a punch strong enough to knock out a Kaiju. Other than that, there were purple streaks around the breastplates and the elbows. Its legs were black with blue reflections, while the upper part of the body maintained the dark grey of the metal that protected the Jaeger.

Divine Retribution intercepted the Kaiju, a category III, codenamed Knifehead, twenty minutes after deployment. 

They had no way of seeing how the fight was progressing except from the grunts and commands that the pilots were giving each other, plus the radar that showed a red and a blue triangle almost on top of each other.

“Ms Crowley,” Marshall said, authoritative and Crowley’s attention snapped to her in an instant. Her whole body tensed; there was something in that tone— “You missed your trial run.”

“I did, ma’am.” 

“Care to explain why Mr Pulsifer notified me of your and Ranger Fell’s absence?”

At that she floundered, something in her preventing her from speaking the naked truth of her panic attack.

“With all due respect, ma’am,” intervened Fell, adopting the military stance, gaze forward, coming to stand right next to Crowley, arm brushing hers. “We request that the trial run be postponed.”

“Why is that, Ranger Fell?”

“We agreed that the neural handshake came too early.” Then she did something strange with her shoulders that looked like her upper body crumbling a bit into a sigh and the rest like she was rolling her shoulders to release a kink in her muscles. She looked directly at Marshall, her next words soft, “We need more time— ma’am.”

Marshall’s gaze narrowed and she looked like she was preparing to tear into Fell, but then she blinked and Crowley could breathe again.

And then the fight took an ugly turn.

A scream filtered through the speakers and Marshall turned her back to them. 

_“We lost connection to the missile launchers! Gabriel, the blade!”_

_“On it!”_

“Front plates are out cold on both sides, ma’am,” relayed Mr Choi even as the Jaeger’s graphic came up, the chest of the Jaeger completely red.

“How much until Cherno Alpha reaches them?”

“ETA seven minutes.”

Marshall took the microphone. “Rangers, backup’s on its way. ETA six minutes. You are to stay alive until it gets there. That’s an order! I repeat: stay alive!”

 _“Roger, ma’am,”_ the woman said.

_“What took Zephyr so long? They were supposed to be on our tail. That new pilot so green behind her ears, she can’t move a Jaeger?”_

Mr Choi shared a look with Marshall to which she nodded once. Crowley bristled at the insult, even though she knew he wasn’t that off the bat. Aziraphale leaned into her a bit, but she couldn’t understand if it was a gesture meant to be comforting or she just repositioned herself.

“Uh, that’s a negative, Gabriel,” he said. “Cherno Alpha’s on his way.”

_“What—”_

_“Gabriel, left!”_

A static roar and screech, a scream and then the comms cut off.

“Get them back online, Loccent!”

“On it! Rerouting the signal and intercepting them.”

 _“Cherno Alpha on site,”_ another woman’s voice filtered through the speakers even as the second blue dot on the radar was approaching the other two rapidly. 

“Prepare to be dropped, Cherno Alpha.”

 _“Drop successful,”_ she continued, her thick Russian accent giving gravitas to every word she spoke. Crowley found herself enjoying it, even as her heart sped up, feeling the urgency of the whole situation. _“Engaging target now.”_

***

“Where are they?”

The voice boomed from the hallway, but Crowley ignored it. She was too mesmerized by the dismantling process of a Jaeger, the human to behemoth ratio, the many engineers swarming along the wounded mecha, taking plates down and repairing what was behind them. She never saw a Jaeger being taken apart.

“You two!” the man’s voice continued. “What the ever-loving-fuck were you thinking? You left us stranded there when you were supposed to be our backup!”

“You had backup.”

Fell’s voice pulled Crowley’s attention away from the window just in time to see a muscled man, a head taller than Fell, march with such vengeance that Crowley thought he’d pass right through Fell. His eyes were poised on Crowley even as Fell placed her stocky build right in front of her. She knew who he was really talking to, or rather who held most of his anger.

“No, that was the backup to our backup which was you,” he pointed out harshly.

“We’re not ready, Gabriel.”

“Not ready?” he intoned, his voice grinding down to pieces those two words. “What the fuck do you two need? A special invitation? You!” He pointed straight at Crowley. “Why aren’t you in the fucking Jaeger, hm? What’s the matter, got cold feet all of a sudden?” Then he shouted, “when lives are at stake here?!”

“Evangelatos.” The command in Fell’s voice was such that it managed to pull his attention towards her. “We are not ready.” She enunciated every word.

“What the fuck does that mean? Explain, Fell, right the fuck now!”

“Gabriel!” A woman still in her black and white suit rushed into the comm room, shoulder-length black hair dishevelled.

By that point, everyone around them ceased whatever they were doing to watch the scene unfold.

“Stay out of this, Michael!” he growled.

Her face stuttered, going through a range of emotions from worried to incredulity, to annoyance, and then to a blank mask. She didn’t step back, though, but remained by Gabriel’s side.

His attention returned to Crowley and she felt pinned to the wall by the ire she saw there. He took a step forward even as Crowley took one back and Fell squared her shoulders, feet sliding apart a bit. He was basically looming over Fell and she didn’t back down _an inch._ That seemed to have drawn his attention.

“What’s this, Fell?” His eyes took her stance in, anger growing tenfold. 

“Leave her alone. You don’t understand.”

“What the fuck don’t I understand? That my Jaeger is out there half destroyed because of your inability to get her into your Jaeger?”

“This is the last warning,” Fell’s dead voice said. “Back. Off.”

But Gabriel didn’t seem to be the kind of guy who would cool down just from that or who even actively listened to what someone said to him when he was angry. He really looked like a bull ready to run Crowley over multiple times.

“What’s the matter?” he said to Crowley, a sneer on his face. “Cat got your tongue? Have nothing to say in your defence? Then again, what defence when it’s your fault that Jaeger looks like that,” he pointed behind her back, but she didn’t turn to look at something she already saw. “Thought as much. You’d run away the first you see a Kaiju. What’s the point of your presence here, anyway? Are you applying for a cleaning job? Sounds marvelous for the li—” 

Fell’s uppercut laid Gabriel flat on his back.

“Fell!” Michael shouted at the same time as Marshal’s booming, _“Ranger!”_ who just re-entered the room.

The shock that Crowley felt was one fourths the shit that he spouted and the rest Fell’s action. She could hear Fell’s slow, heavy exhale because the room was that silent. Nobody moved, nobody talked and she was pretty sure nobody even breathed. 

“Evangelatos, Fell, in my office. Now!” Marshal barked before she left the room.

Michael offered her hand and Gabriel accepted it, letting her pull him up before they shared a cryptic look, even though Crowley thought he’d rebuff such a display of help. Crowley looked at Fell, but the pilot followed Marshal out of the room, Gabriel behind, without looking back at Crowley.

The room returned to life and the overlapping conversations were getting to Crowley so she left, passing by a familiar guy who she remembered from the previous day. Her stride was long, so she didn’t lose Fell’s blonde crown of hair, donned up in a low bun, as she and Gabriel strode side-by-side.

But they weren’t the only ones doing that.

“Go back to your room,” Michael gritted from her side.

“No,” she said, and then had to clear her throat. 

“Go back, idiot. This doesn’t concern you.”

“It does. I’m here to be her co-pilot.”

“Did you drift? Did you get to share a neural link with each other?” Crowley didn’t say anything, the words feeling like vices strangling her throat. “Thought so,” she echoed Gabriel’s words from before, but they weren’t backed up by ire or malice, they were matter-of-fact which hurt even more. “Leave.”

That stopped Crowley. She turned and stared at Michael through her shades. 

“I can’t.”

“Yes, you can.” There was a good distance between them, three people abreast could have passed. Michael still didn’t raise her voice. “Nothing keeps you from leaving. What’s your purpose here if you can’t drift with Aziraphale? She needs a pilot, not an arm candy. This is war, if it escaped your attention. Leave.”

“I won’t.”

Michael cocked her head a bit, her gaze turning calculating, as if Crowley just revealed a piece of information that she didn’t have before.

Yet, Crowley couldn’t understand why she was fighting back now. Up until that point, Fell seemed to be the only one that wanted her there. Even Marshal looked at Crowley as if she wouldn’t last long, but then again, it was hard for Crowley to discern anything on her stoic face. Anathema and the engineering guy treated her more like a shiny new toy, ripe with newness which was bound to fade eventually. Doctor Tracy didn’t seem happy nor angry or sad at the prospect of her becoming a pilot, but that might be because her profession kept her from expressing any such emotions.

Gabriel clearly thought her to be a worthless piece of garbage and Michael sort of shared that feeling now.

Again, the only one that really wanted her there was Fell. And even that was in relation to her ability to drift with Fell, which they still had to find out if it was at all possible.

So when she examined all of that there really wasn’t anything keeping her there apart from the sense of urgency and need that Fell expressed about her involvement in the programme.

“She needs me. I’m the reason she’s in trouble.” Crowley found her voice, grabbing the first thought that made sense and didn’t make her feel as worthless as Gabriel had told her. 

“No, that’s more reason for you to stay out of this. Or do you want a repeat? Gabriel’s not known for cooling off that fast. So for the last time, leave.”

With that, Michael turned and hurried down the corridor, leaving Crowley standing there.

“But I don’t even know the way back to the room,” she muttered to herself.

“I can show you,” said a familiar voice, and Crowley whirled around, taking in the tall man awkwardly hovering a few steps behind her. “I mean, if you want me to. No pressure or anything. Just— you sort of look like an abandoned puppy standing here in this empty corridor.”

Great, exactly the person she wanted to see after the low blow Michael dealt her. She rounded on him, trying her intimidation trick once again.

“Really? This again?” he said, even though he did back up against the wall. Crowley smiled lopsided. “I’m not scared of you.” She lifted an eyebrow, still closing in on him. “I mean, I am, but you’re the one who needs help and I can offer it, so you don’t want to hurt the person with the solution.”

“Really?” Her smile widened, lips revealing a bit of teeth. “What makes you think that I won’t make you see a world of pain right now?”

“Because you care about Aziraphale?”

She cocked her eyebrow again, unphased.

“You don’t want to make more trouble for her?”

That hit harder than Crowley thought it would. The nerve on this guy. Who was he anyway? Marshal came with him in tow. Was he that important?

“What was your name again?”

“Newt. I mean, Newton Pulsifer, but everyone calls me Newt.” He placed a hand between them and Crowley stared down at it until Newt gave up the idea. “Anyway, I’m Head Engineer of Division 3 Jaeger Recondition and Rebuild. Or J.R.R.” He grinned.

Crowley stared at him.

“Oh come on, J.R.R.?” Nothing. “Tolkien?” Still nothing. “You’re more lost than I thought.”

“I’m reconsidering letting you go unscathed.”

“Okay, okay,” he said, lifting his hands up. “I’ll lead you to your room. If you’d follow me.”

***

“What did Marshal say?” Crowley asked the moment they took their seats in the mess hall that evening. She hadn’t had the opportunity to ask her about it until then.

“Nothing you need to worry about.”

Crowley narrowed her eyes. “But something did happen.”

Fell didn’t answer until she finished chewing the peas and bacon they were served. But even then, she didn’t say anything else on the matter.

“You won’t tell me.”

She met Crowley’s stare briefly, before returning her attention to her plate. With a sigh, she let it drop. For now. She looked down at her meal. Peas in tomato sauce and bits of bacon with two slices of white bread. She picked half-heartedly at one such bacon bit, but she found that the bread tasted incredibly good. She hadn’t had fresh bread in years. 

“Then answer a question for me.” Fell threw her a suspicious, guarded glance and Crowley fluttered her hand. “Don’t worry, won’t ask you about the meeting.”

“Very well. Ask away.”

“Why did Marshal come with you to get me? I mean, now it feels like overkill to me.” 

“She wanted a bit of fresh air,” Aziraphale said amiably, almost done with her meal. “That bar was one of her favourites off the coast growing up, and she'd promised me that we'd go out sometime, just the two of us.”

“Really. Why? Isn’t she your superior?”

“She is.” She swallowed, then dabbed at her mouth with a paper towel before she drank the water from her cup. “But she's also my mother.”

Crowley stared.

Fell smiled. “It's the skin, isn't it? Too much difference in colour.” 

“Sorry for… uh.”

That pulled a chuckle from Fell. “I'm not. I'm adopted.”

“Oh.” She wasn’t going to say ‘sorry’ again, although it was on the tip of her tongue. A habit from her childhood.

She chewed on another piece of bacon as she chewed on the information.

“So she wanted to spend some time with you outside of work.”

“That was the idea.”

“But I got in the way.” Crowley grinned humorlessly.

“Not really. I think she was curious about you.” Fell threw her an apologetic smile. “I might have talked her ear off after I came back from the fight.”

It was hard for Crowley to believe that she made such an impression on someone like Fell, that she’d get her mom, who also happened to be the shatterdome marshal, down to a rundown bar.

“Does she always mix business with pleasure?” Crowley asked after a while.

“What do you mean?”

“You two came to that bar to recruit me. That’s business. But you said she promised to take you out.”

“Ah. Well, a woman of her status must know how to multitask. The day is only so long.” She grinned.

“Doesn't that bother you?”

“Why would it? I enjoy every moment I get to spend with her. And I see the merits of getting two birds with one stone. We don't see much of each other these days.”

“Since the Kaiju attacks intensified.”

She nodded.

But just as Crowley was preparing to take the last slice of bread, a hand slammed the table near her elbow, making Fell’s empty plate and spoon clatter. Crowley almost jumped out of her skin and into her neighbour, her spoon falling into her plate with a flat splat, before she realized it was Anathema. Fell frowned at the neurologist.

“This is the only warning I’m gonna give you,” Anathema said, deadly serious, and Crowley’s heart rate kicked up, unable to break her intense stare, the smile a mean thing.

“Anathema, what is happening?”

She ignored Fell, pointing a menacing finger Crowley’s way. “Stop teasing my boyfriend or else.”

“Who?”

“Newton Pulsifer,” Fell replied. “Head Engineer of Division 3.”

“Oh, the mousey guy who thinks he’s… fun… ny,” she trailed off as Anathema’s eyes narrowed in warning. 

“Anathema, dear, I don’t think this is necessary. Surely Crowley didn’t mean any harm.”

“Well—”

“Crowley.” Fell’s rebuff stopped her from saying what she actually meant. 

“I wouldn’t hurt the guy, seriously,” Crowley scoffed. “But if I keep finding his nose in my business, I’m not responsible for how I respond.” 

“He’s only trying to help,” Anathema said.

“How did you even find out? Did he tell you?”

The woman smirked. “Gossip is a currency here. If you know where to listen, you find out interesting things.”

Crowley glanced at Fell who had a closed off expression on her face, and said, “Then it’s a wonder that the media doesn’t know more about what goes on here.”

“This is the only warning you’re getting.” She pointed the finger again, then, swift as a hummingbird, she took Crowley’s slice of bread.

“Hey! I was looking forward to that!”

“And I mean business!” she called back in retaliation, waving at them with the spoils of the war.

Crowley turned an incredulous look towards Fell. “Is she for real? She just stole my bread after threatening me!”

Fell nodded solemnly. “Stealing your food and walking away with it is a sure sign that Doctor Anathema Device means business.”

She stared and stared, but Fell only stared back placidly. “You’re pulling my leg.”

“I wouldn’t dare,” she said gravely, but there was something in her eyes that didn’t convince Crowley of that.


	4. Bonds

***

Carmine Zuigiber was part of the veteran and only pair to have ever piloted Apocalypse Four. As far as Crowley was told by Aziraphale the night before, the name had nothing to do with the Jaeger count and everything to do with a brainstorming session between the head engineers, a few key mechanics that build said Jaeger, and the first pilots to ever pilot it. But between her and Aziraphale, it sounded a lot like an inside joke.

“It’s good to have a symbiotic relationship with your mechanics and engineers,” Aziraphale had said. “Such things as naming a Jaeger is exclusively left in the hands of the head engineers. As pilots we have no say in it, but sometimes such exceptions happen and you are allowed to offer ideas. It’s also important to respect the mechanics who work tirelessly on our Jaegers. It creates this oiled machine that ensures you’re prepped and ready for battle in the least time possible. Besides, it’s common courtesy. You need them just as much as everyone else needs you.”

That, however, did not prepare Crowley for the redhead that met her the next morning at the landing dock by the ocean. She was dressed half military (trousers and black shin-high boots) and half casual (buttoned black shirt, sleeves rolled up above her elbows) which made her red hair spike and look very much unnatural. Hers was maybe a shade or two brighter than Crowley’s.

The physical appearance did come with a smirk that wouldn’t quite go away even as she explained the kind of training she’d have to endure from that morning on for the next two weeks, and an attitude that made Crowley debate if she liked her or hated her guts.

It had nothing to do with the fact that she felt out of her depth and constantly oscillating between asking herself if all that was worth it and what the hell she was even doing there.

For the next three hours, she alternated between stretching exercises, two ‘dome laps and free weight lifting that worked her major muscle groups. She thought Zuigiber complimented her for the short time it took her to complete the first lap, but then she did a set of combined exercises with free weights based on Zuigiber’s whistle rhythm and Crowley took back her good opinion of the woman.

Zuigiber was hell incarnated, if Crowley ever saw one. She only allowed for one minute breaks between the intense workouts and the stretches. And they were scheduled for another three hours in the evening. On the beach. Perfect place for some pilates exercises coupled with rope jumping, sprint running, and more free weights lifting.

Her diet suffered a drastic change, too. She had a page detailing the dishes she was allowed to eat, so rich in protein and fibers that Crowley’s stomach twisted uncomfortably. She’s never had that sort of option, living day-by-day as she was— had been. On top of that, she’d also have to remember to take the supplements, considering that Marshal only gave her two weeks before they’d need to do the neural handshake.

And she needed to be able to move the Jaeger without tiring out fast.

By the time she stumbled into her shared room with Fell, her whole body was a quivering muscle and she was debating if she should take a shower first or crash into her bed and sleep until she was due for her evening spartan training.

She came up short just inside the room.

“Oh, hello. Is your training finished already?”

Crowley stared. Fell was dressed in mossy green overalls, the upper half pooling around her hips, and a brown tee, both displaying a collection of black and various shades of brown streaks and spots. The black smudges extended to her arms, neck and face. Even her usually vibrant white-blonde hair was darker, dirty and dishevelled, her bangs plastered to her sweaty forehead.

“What happened to you?” Crowley asked instead. “You look like you wrestled with a Jaeger and lost the fight.”

She grinned. “Not quite. I was down by the Engineering department, helping Newt with a new piece of Jaeger equipment. It’s new reinforcement for Gabriel and Michael’s Jaeger.”

“That doesn’t sound as dirty as you look.”

She looked down at herself. “Ah, I also helped the mechanics fix the plates on the Jaeger. Quite fun, I should say. I almost toppled over the edge once, but Mark was gracious enough to pull me back.”

“You…” 

Did she have any energy left to worry about her would-be pilot? She looked happy, though, talking about her near-death experience like it was the norm. The danger had passed. Fell was whole and unharmed from what she could see from the other side of the room. So Crowley chose to be in awe at the fact that Fell had the brain and dexterity to help around the Engineering department. 

She shook her head. “You’re something else.”

Fell looked like she wasn’t sure how to answer that, so instead she said, “do you want to take a shower first?”

Crowley paused. “Well, you seem to be needing it more than I do, considering,” she waved her hand at Fell’s body, “and that chair looks uncomfortable enough to keep me awake.”

“Oh, that harsh a training?”

Crowley stretched her arms and back, feeling the burn. The soreness wouldn’t settle in until she had time to rest, which meant that if she wanted to be able to follow Zuigiber’s workout that evening, she shouldn’t take long breaks. 

“Not really that harsh, but the only exercise I’m good at and have endurance for is running which is really just obstacle running. So pulling weights like my life depends on them… yeah. I’m not feeling the soreness right now, but I’ll feel it tomorrow.”

Fell smiled. “Then I’ll take the shower first. After, we’ll go eat lunch because I’m hungry and most of your supplements need to be taken after you’ve eaten, and you should pay a visit to Anathema later this afternoon.”

Crowley frowned, trying to choose which info she should ask about first; the fact that Fell knew that she needed to take supplements, that the supplements apparently needed to be taken after having eaten, or that she was scheduled for a visit she didn’t know about. She settled for, “why?” letting Fell decide which one she would clarify.

Fell moved towards the bathroom, unbuttoning her overalls on the left side. “I asked her to explain to you how a neural handshake works. It’s better to be prepared for what can go wrong, even if it will sound too theoretical.”

She disappeared into the bathroom, but the door was still open, so Crowley went to the desk, taking off her denim jacket and placing it on the back of the chair.

“Oh dear, I do look like I wrestled a Jaeger.”

Crowley snorted a laugh. “Told ya.”

Half of Fell appeared in the doorway, frown etched between her eyebrows. Crowley noticed the light blue peak of underwear and the curve of the thigh.

“You still think I can do this?” Crowley asked out of the blue. It might have been the rush of adrenaline subsiding or the trust in her that Fell continued to show, but she felt a wave of insecurity wash over her.

The frown cleared. “Of course I do. We wouldn’t be here, if I didn’t believe that with all my heart.”

“Will you ever tell me what happened yesterday in Marshal’s office with you and Gabriel?”

Fell’s face puckered — for lack of a better word — and Crowley found herself amazed by how expressive she could be. How open and unguarded, as if she didn’t need to fear anything. And of course she didn’t. This was supposed to be a safe space. Not just the Shatterdome, but the room they shared, too. It was vastly different from the carefully-constructed amiable-yet-guarded expression she’d showed Crowley in the bar.

“Nothing of importance. As you know, Marshal gave you two weeks to build up the strength needed for the Jaeger. A bit too short a time, if you ask me, considering that you have lean muscles to begin with, but she wouldn’t budge no matter what I said. So we’ll have to work with that.”

“That doesn’t sound like a conversation that takes up the better part of an hour. Or that requires anyone else’s presence but my own.”

Fell frowned and pursed her lips. “The rest is of no importance.”

“You keep saying that,” Crowley said, a bit miffed, “but we both know that it is. It was my fault that you were called in, after all.”

A flash of anger hardened the skin around her eyes. “If there is any blame to be assigned here, it rests solely on Gabriel’s shoulders for insulting you and mine for snapping. You have no fault whatsoever and I’d appreciate it if you refrained from assigning blame where blame shouldn’t be assigned.”

She shut the bathroom door firmly and Crowley blinked.

“Uh… did I strike a nerve there?” she asked herself out loud.

Ten minutes later saw Fell leaving the bathroom, dressed in clean clothes and drying her hair, a sheepish look on her face. In the meantime, Crowley chose to sprawl her gangly limbs on the uncomfortable chair, waiting for her turn.

“I apologize for snapping at you earlier,” she said, and Crowley’s eyebrows lifted a bit in surprise. Then fire returned to her eyes. “But I stand by what I said. You have no blame in this.”

Crowley felt a half smile pulling at her lips. “Some have said that I’m to blame for even existing.”

Her towel fell backwards, draping itself over her shoulders and wet hair. It was the wrong thing to say.

“I mean—” Crowley tried to put out the fire she’d started.

“Those people clearly did not know what they were talking about because if there’s one thing that I’m certain about is that you have so much kindness stored away in you. You don’t need to prove yourself to me, I know that you’re a nice person.” 

Crowley was out of her chair in a second, crowding into Fell’s personal space, but not touching her.

“I’m not nice,” she snarled. “Nice is a four-letter word for people who can afford that.”

Fell didn’t budge or apologize. “You are a kind, brave person—”

Crowley threw her hands in the air, walking away. “How many times do I have to tell you?!” She felt hysteria rise in her voice as she rounded on Fell again. “I’ve done things out there that you’d condemn here. People have died!”

“People are dying every day, whether we do something about it or not. The world is not a safe place for anybody anymore. That is why we are here. We fight to return that peace to this planet.”

“I’m not talking about those monsters, Fell! I’m talking about me. About human beings and what they’re capable of, monsters around or not.”

“Crowley,” Fell began, the tone of her voice lowered, more determined, “whatever you have done out there prior to coming here had been done to survive. No one can condemn you for that.”

Crowley sighed furiously, turning her back on Fell. She didn’t understand! She really didn’t understand what Crowley was trying to say. There was a stupid image that Fell had made of who Crowley was and no matter what she said, Fell wouldn’t change a thing about it.

In that moment she wished she could just drag her down to the Jaeger and drift so she could show her what a despicable, horrible person Crowley was deep down. That placing such faith and trust in Crowley was a mistake and she would pay dearly for it.

But she was a coward.

She couldn’t bring herself to make such a move because, deep down, she desperately wished that Fell was right. That Fell’s confidence could purge Crowley’s past clean and make her a new person, worthy of Fell’s attention and faith. 

When Fell spoke again, she was much closer. “I’m glad that we met,” she said softly, “and that you chose to come and give me a chance to prove to you that you have more potential than you believe. The fact that you’re still here, going through harsh training and making an effort to be my co-pilot, shows your resilience and determination to surpass whatever lies in your path. Not a lot of people can demonstrate such strength of character like you do. So as far as I’m concerned, those ignorant people can bugger off and be trampled by a Kaiju.”

It felt like a punch to her gut and she inwardly choked on it. “You’re a good person,” she blurted out, then turned around. _Angel_ almost slipped at the end, but she stopped just in time. It felt like something too intimate to voice in that moment.

Crowley saw Fell narrow her eyes, mouth opening halfway to say something, but then she reconsidered. “Well, thank you. I’m sure, though, that after we’ll drift, that opinion will change.”

Crowley watched her drape the towel over her side of the bed, and she lurched forward towards the bathroom, feeling a weakness in her limbs as she pulled off her tee.

“I doubt it,” Crowley said.

***

Fell made sure not only that she’d eat more than a quarter of her meal, but that she also took her supplements. In fact, she appointed herself as Crowley’s personal dietary coach or rather, someone who reminded Crowley to take those pills or dissolve the powder in her milk. She never pushed for more when Crowley refused to take another bite which she appreciated.

After lunch, she felt queasy enough that Anathema didn’t go into an hour long explanation of everything concerning the drift, and instead chose to give her the highlights and dos and don’ts while drifting. There was no comment on her earlier warning, and Crowley didn’t bring it up again. 

The short meeting meant that Crowley had several hours of free time which she didn’t know what to do about. Going back to their room only meant that Crowley’s lazy ass would crash into her bed and then kiss goodbye evening training which would most probably have Zuigiber barge in and kick her ass to the beach. 

Yes, Zuigiber was that kind of person. Crowley didn’t need a demonstration. She could feel it in her bones.

So what was left for her to do was to wander around the Shatterdome. The Kwoon Room was empty and she didn’t have the courage to venture into the command room, so she ended up walking through the maze of container stacks and moving vehicles, four Jaegers on her right side, until she spied Fell up by the knee of one of them.

She’d have liked to go up there and be useful, too, but she knew she’d only be in the way.

“Oh, fancy meeting you here,” said Newt.

Crowley smirked and turned around fast enough that her lunch revolted and Newt had to steady her with a hand.

“Whoa! You okay?”

“Yeah,” Crowley said, trying to get her bearings again. “Just my lunch.” Off Newt’s look, she added, “not big on food, me.”

He was carrying a box filled with several rolls of white paper that were sticking out. “Want to trail along, so you don’t look like a lost puppy anymore?”

“You’re being funny today.” She lifted an eyebrow.

“I’m always funny. Ask Anathema.”

“I’d rather not.” Newt threw her a confused look, but she changed the subject. “Where are you going?”

“Not far from here.” Crowley just stared at him when he didn’t elaborate. “Relax, you’ll be able to find your way out. Aziraphale usually stops by when she finishes helping around.”

“And that’s usually before seven, right?”

“Uh— maybe?”

“Then it’s a no.”

He frowned. “Where do you need to be at seven anyway? You don’t have a job. Not anymore, at least.”

“I never had a job.” She grinned to hide how out of depth she felt there.

“Date?” Crowley snorted and then cackled as a response. “Then?” 

“Training.” 

“Oh. That sounds interesting.”

“Sorta is.”

“Who are you training with?”

“Someone called Zuigiber.”

“Ah, my condolences.”

“Shut up! She’s not that bad.”

“Uh-huh, if you say so.” He shifted the box in his other hand. “So, wanna come?”

“Since you keep pestering me.”

He rolled his eyes and walked down the corridor of stacked containers. “I asked nicely.”

“Last I checked, asking nicely was not synonymous to insulting someone.”

“What? You did look like a puppy waiting for her master to take her home.”

“I don’t even want to tell you how wrong that sounds.”

He shrugged. “I’m just telling the truth.”

“Your girlfriend must really love you in bed.”

No quip came from the man two steps in front of Crowley, but she noticed that his ears had a tinge of red. She smirked with more gusto and filed that detail away for later usage.

“Out for lunch, Newt?” called a guy who just exited a container.

Newt waved with a smile. “Hey, Mark. Yeah. Swung by Anathema’s, but she wasn’t in. So I picked up the blueprints that arrived this morning from Marty.”

The guy was probably a decade younger than them both, but he had tanned skin and sandy blonde hair. What struck Crowley was his eyes; a warm hazel that hid an intelligence and an old soul, and a mouth shaped like a secret smile.

“I set up your computer the way you asked. Marty texted me earlier. He invited us to a pint later at the pub down by Lucio’s. You coming?”

Newt considered that. “Nah, I’ll probably be swamped by work.”

The guy, Mark, looked at the box and whistled slowly. “Yeah, no kiddin’.”

“Thanks, Mark.”

“No worries, mate. See you later. Ma’am.” He nodded at Crowley and then left.

Newt threw her a glance at the same time that Crowley mouthed ‘ma’am’ incredulously and Newt laughed as he guided them into the blue container Mark exited.

It had a window on one side. The insides looked like someone took an office and a mechanic’s workshop and slammed them together. Along the window wall and flanking the door were tables full of large and small pieces of metal that Crowley couldn’t even begin to describe what they were. The other wall was free of clutter and it only had two long desks pushed together to house neatly-stacked papers and folders, and three desk lamps.

In the middle of that, sat what looked like parts of a computer in a reinforced suitcase. Apart from the lamp behind it, there was nothing else nearby.

Newt placed the box on the corner of his desk and turned around to face her.

“Welcome to my humble abode.”

“You sleep here?”

“No?”

“Why’s that a question?” She frowned, then it clicked and she snorted. “Really?”

“Hey, don’t judge! I like what I do, and a lot of the time my job requires me to be here day and night. Those Jaegers need to be ready before the next Kaiju appears.”

“I feel for your girlfriend.”

“She understands.”

“Aren’t you lucky.”

A soft smile graced his lips, making him look even more teasable, if that was possible. “The luckiest.”

Crowley felt a stab, deep and painful, and it took her a bit to realize that it was envy she felt. Envious of this nerd with his annoying sense of humour and the unappealing skill of materializing when Crowley was at her lowest emotionally.

“So what do you do, specifically?”

“Mostly, I help with the reconstruction of Jaegers that suffered damage, identify faults in designs and sometimes suggest improvements on the Jaegers out there.”

“Huh, so you’re a big shot.”

“Uh, not really.”

Crowley quirked an eyebrow and Newt went to take out the paper rolls, not offering any more explanation.

“So how do you feel?” he asked. “After the statement Aziraphale made.”

“What statement?”

“You know, after Aziraphale made it pretty clear that you were to be treated with the same respect everyone else is.”

Oh, that. “Based on that, you should be punched, too.”

It startled a giggle from Newt that turned fast into a nervous distaccato.

“She wouldn’t, would she?” he asked, apprehension dripping from his words.

That had Crowley guffaw because this man was the most ridiculous human being she’d ever encountered.

“You do realize that she’s not my bodyguard, right?”

“No, but she’s protective of you.”

“I don’t need protection.”

“Not usually, probably. But from someone like Gabriel, you do. You don’t know him like we do. Don’t know what makes him go off and what doesn’t.”

“Is this Gabriel the boss of every pilot here?”

Newt chuckled. “No, God no. If we were to use ranks from their previous jobs, Aziraphale outranks him. She’d be his boss, and not because she’s Marshal’s daughter. But not here. Among all the other pilots, only Michael is lower than Gabriel and— well, probably you. But you don’t have a rank, not prior to coming here, so… I’m not sure you qualify in any way on this rank list.”

“Thanks.”

“No offence.”

“Uh-huh. You keep shooting one after the other. I’m feeling pretty much offence-ridden.”

“Uh…”

Crowley grinned. “Relax. Won’t report you to Fell.”

“Fell?” He frowned. “Oh! You mean Aziraphale. Why do you call her that?”

“Because it’s her name?”

“Yeah, but she’s your pilot. Sounds so weird when you call her that.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t feel like we’re at that level just yet.”

It was Newt’s turn to lift an eyebrow. “What level would that be?”

“First name basis.”

“But you’re her co-pilot.”

“Is that what everyone in this damn Shatterdome thinks already?”

He shrugged. “Pretty much. Aziraphale spent years trying to find a pilot. She’s probably the only pilot in the world who has the largest number of failed drifts. And she did all the training required for that, and then some. Like Engineering.”

Crowley looked back out the open door at the leg of a Jaeger, but it wasn’t the one she saw Fell working on.

“I saw.”

Newt chuckled. “Believe it or not, she’s our pride and joy even though she doesn’t have a degree in engineering. Until a few weeks ago she thought her place was here with us, but then she met you and— well, wouldn’t say that it was a match made in heaven, but she firmly believes that you two will be able to drift and stay in the drift.”

“Yeah,” she said, looking out of the window. “She keeps saying that.”

A few seconds of silence passed. “Well, she has your best interests at heart.”

“Saw that. It’s— weird.”

“Weird how?”

“Not used to it.”

“You mean you’re not used to someone taking a stance for you? Because she won’t stop doing that. Aziraphale can be very stubborn which is both a quality and a flaw. But I have to say that I've never seen Aziraphale punch someone. The whole Shatterdome is still buzzing.”

Crowley snorted.

“Everybody’s talking about that scene.” 

She scratched a bit at her chin. “It was a pretty awesome uppercut, I won’t lie.”

Newt grinned in agreement as he unfolded and folded back blueprints of some kind on the desk. “Aziraphale, like everyone here, ignores Gabriel when he’s in one of his foul moods. We learned to let him fume by himself until he cools down or Michael steps in. But that was the first time Aziraphale not only stood up against him and didn’t let his usual antics pass, but also punched him. She’s not the violent type. At all. Especially towards someone who works here. But that uppercut has a lot of people moon over the prized pilot of Sydney.”

“Prized?”

“Yup. She’s sort of a celebrity here. It’s because even though she’s a pilot without a partner, she still makes herself useful however she can. She also makes efforts to keep people’s morale up, especially in the Engineering department. We’re not as visible as the pilots are, so she makes sure that we know how appreciated we are after every Kaiju fight. It’s not much, but most of the Engineers respect and appreciate her for that.”

“That sounds like a lot of work she’s doing here.”

“Oh, yes. She’s the one they turn to if there are matters that require interdepartmental relations. She’s good at being a buffer between various levels of specialization. I bet that more than Marshal, the Engineering department would be ready to follow _her_ orders.”

After what she saw outside and the little speech she regaled Crowley with earlier that day, she fully understood that sentiment.

He was checking the left, upper corner of each blueprint he unrolled. It turned out that they were all Jaeger blueprints. He seemed to find the one he had been looking for.

“What are you doing with these? Designing a new model?”

“Oh, no. Far from that. I’m not good with designing anything this big and complex. I’m good at identifying design flaws and stuff that doesn’t correspond to the real time scans. Sometimes I also offer some suggestions for improvements in design pieces to Marshal and if she’s okay with them, she’ll let the factories know. What I’m doing now is cross-checking the repairs that have been done on Divine Retribution and— what? What’s so funny?”

“No, just— Divine Retribution? Really?” 

Newt was smiling, too; clearly, he also found the name hilarious. “Yeah, well, Gabriel and Michael insisted on it, even though the head engineers didn’t want to go with it.”

“Is it really both of them, or is it just Gabriel who wanted that ridiculous name?”

Newt put paper weights on each corner of the blueprint, checking with the design on the screen of his computer, half an arm’s length to his left, and making notes in a paper notepad to the side. Crowley stepped closer, eyes perusing the white lines and the various numbers and abbreviations on the blueprint.

“We had bets on that,” Newt said, an amused smile ticking the corner of his mouth, “for weeks after they announced the new Jaeger’s name. Who was the one who came up with the idea. After a month, more than half of them were very much in favour of Gabriel.”

“Bet he bragged about it every chance he got. He seems like the type.”

Newt chuckled. “He didn’t, actually. It was a hushed matter, believe it or not. The reason behind the bets leaning towards Gabriel was because someone heard him talk on the phone to someone important about the Jaeger. That gave fuel to the rumour that he had connections high up the food chain which got him to push his idea through. You probably don’t know this, but pilots rarely get a say in the name of the Jaeger.”

“Oh, I know. Fell explained it to me.”

Newt nodded. “Then Michael caught wind of the bets and put a stop to them.”

“Spoilsports!” 

“Well, she strongly believes in Gabriel and is very protective of him. She sees such bets as degrading for the pilots’ reputation.”

“Do they have history together or something?”

He threw her a glance. “History as in… are they together?”

“No. I mean, history history. If she feels that protective of him, that means that they knew each before. Or is this a side-effect of drifting? Feeling protective of your partner.”

Newt tilted his head left and right, scribbling another line. “I don’t know if that’s a side-effect. You’ll have to ask Anathema. But I think there’s a bit of that after you drift. It probably comes from getting to know the other person so intimately.”

Crowley grimaced, the old fears rearing their heads up at that. She shifted where she stood, hip leaning over the side of the table.

“As for Gabriel and Michael, they do have some history. But nobody knows where they met and how long ago. They’re very tight-lipped about their personal lives. I think only Aziraphale might know more, but she respects their privacy and would never say anything that the other two haven’t already.”

Crowley hummed, actually interested in the process of him taking down notes because she was trying to figure out what they meant and if they corresponded to any abbreviations on the blueprint.

“So,” she said, then paused long enough to draw Newt’s attention.

“What?”

“Is there a reason why you’re doing handwritten notes instead of using that computer down there?”

“Oh.” Newt looked on the opposite side as if that was the first time he ever saw it. “I’m— not good with computers.” Off Crowley’s lifted eyebrow, he said, “really. No good. That’s why I have Mark set it up to what I need. It’s a good day when I don’t need to change the images.”

“What does that mean?”

“Let’s just say that electronic devices tend to go on a long vacation when I try to use them.”

“Uh…”

Newt fluttered a hand, even as he was checking the blueprint and then throwing a glance at the computer. “It’s complicated. Even I don’t fully understand why it’s happening.” He shrugged. “I got used to doing it old school. And no one cares what I do to solve problems as long as they get solved.” He paused. “Though your Jaeger is the only one I can work on myself.”

“Have no Jaeger.”

Newt sighed. “Aziraphale’s Jaeger and by extension yours, too. It’s analogue. Nothing digital about it except some of the cockpit.”

Fell finished early and helped her navigate the maze of containers. Zuigiber saluted her with her usual cocky smile and Fell nodded with a warm smile, which made Crowley want to snap her fingers in front of Fell’s eyes to wake her up. Zuigiber’s attitude was like a shark’s constantly smelling blood. And Fell looked exactly like the prey she was after, though they didn’t look at each other like acquaintances would. 

Most probably they also had history together which didn’t surprise her.

But apart from the nod of acknowledgement, they didn’t exchange any other words and Crowley was soon Zuigiber’s sole attention.

***

She had enough strength and energy to drag her abused body to the room, yank down the mattress, because no way in any hell was she going to be able to climb up without breaking something, and then more or less free-fell into it, face-first like a starfish, with a long, pained groan.

Physical exhaustion almost pulled her all the way into a dreamless sleep when the short screech of the door opening and closing jolted her awake. She groaned again, this time annoyed, and managed to change her head’s position.

“Oh dear.”

Crowley grumbled something, but her eyes were slipping shut again.

“I suppose dinner is out of the question.” 

She heard the clank of metal on the desk, but she didn’t even try to identify it.

“My dear, you cannot skip on your supplements.”

“Can’t eat,” she muttered and hoped Fell understood.

“I can see that you’re exhausted.”

“Tots,” she said and smiled as much as she could.

“I suppose you didn’t stretch before lying down.” Crowley grunted in what she meant to be negation. Fell tutted and when Crowley peered one eye semi-open, Fell was squatting down near the mattress. “You’ll feel worse tomorrow morning, my dear. You really need to stretch your muscles before going to bed.”

“Can’t move.”

Fell hummed. “Would you be disagreeable to a massage?”

Crowley was about to grunt when the question registered. That required more than superficial brain power, so she found herself blinking her eyes fully open to look at Fell.

“What d’you mean?”

“Nothing taxing. I’d like to help prevent sore muscles, and I know this massage technique that relaxes them.”

“Uh…”

“You don’t have to agree. I’m aware it might be a bit too personal, even if it doesn’t necessarily require skin contact.”

“I mean… does it really help?”

Fell’s beaming face made Crowley mentally locate the whereabouts of her shades. Under the chair beside Fell.

“It does. I had that done on me on numerous occasions in the past.”

Crowley stared some more at Fell. “Okay. Have at it,” she acquiesced in the end, relaxing her head over her forearms.

Fell positioned herself on the mattress, careful so that her knees didn’t touch Crowley’s side. She could have. Crowley was feeling the heat radiating off her anyway.

“Okay, now try to relax. It will hurt a bit, but I’ll try to be as quick as I can.”

She blinked, frowning, as Fell’s strong hands pressed down on the muscles between her shoulder blades. It was slow moving at first, feeling as if Fell was mapping out her back, her cushiony hands a heaven-sent. Crowley was so relaxed, she began to fall back asleep.

But then the weight on the mattress shifted and got distributed along both her flanks as Fell straddled her, and she jolted awake so fast she couldn’t register what was happening or where the pain was coming from.

“Fell! What the fuck! Hurts! Sto— Fell!”

“Just bear with it for a second! I know! I’ll be done in a bit.”

 _“Fuck! Fell!_ It tickles! Stooop, oh god, stoop it hurts! Fucking tickles! Fell!”

They were both breathing heavily by the time Fell moved back to the side and Crowley’s legs felt like they’d been passed through a grinder several times. Everything quivered. The energetic pinches that Fell applied to her calf and thigh muscles had come out of nowhere, followed by extensive, pressured palms that stretched her muscles impossibly and repeatedly.

Crowley turned on her back, staring in horror and betrayal at Fell.

“Wha’d’you do that for?”

“It will help in the morning,” she said, looking flushed and a tad bit apologetic. “I’m sorry for the discomfort, but your muscles were already beginning to stiffen, so the pain was more pronounced.”

Mollified, Crowley sat up, stretching her legs one by one. Now that she gave time for her muscles to relax and ‘take in’ the assault, they didn’t feel as sore and stiff as they did before.

“Where did you learn that?”

“Oh!” She brightened again. “A good friend taught me, who learned it from his Chinese master. He’s a chef at his own sushi restaurant in London.”

“So you know magic from a sushi chef who learnt it from a Chinese.”

“It’s not magic, silly girl. It’s just— a way to unblock your chi.”

“Come again?”

“Your body. There’s energy in it that you use daily. Depending on what you do, you use some parts more than others, so when you exert those less used parts all of a sudden or too much, the energy gets blocked, which causes pain in your muscles or joints.”

Crowley stared at this being, kneeling on her mattress, her body language and face so open, Crowley felt as if she could topple over and fall into her. Stupid thought. She mentally shook herself.

“You’re full of surprises, Fell.”

“The same I can say about you.”

“Me?” Crowley snorted, rearranging her legs so she could prop her elbow on a bent knee. “What you see is what you get. Nothing else to discover.”

“I beg to differ.” 

There was a secret smile gracing Fell’s lips, as if she knew something about Crowley that Crowley didn’t. She lifted an eyebrow at her.

“Enlighten me, then.”

Fell pressed her lips, the smile still there. “You’ll see when we drift.”

Crowley sighed, and leaned back against the drawer side of the desk, feeling the handles digging into her back. “You still believe that we can.”

“I do.”

“What if I can’t go through with this hellish training?”

“You will.”

Crowley snorted. “Where’s all this confidence coming from?”

“You’re not a quitter, Crowley. Of that I am sure.” There was confidence backing up those words, a fire behind them and in her eyes that made Crowley momentarily speechless.

“The panic attack I had begs to differ.”

“I agree to disagree.”

“We’ll see.”

Fell leaned forward, a hand covering her wrist, and Crowley stared at it.

“If you don’t believe it, at least believe in me.”

She searched Fell’s gaze for that tell that alerted Crowley of platitudes and white lies to comfort people in low spirits. There was nothing of that kind there. Only determination, burning like controlled fire.

“You’re asking a lot from a stranger, you know that?”

The hand retreated, as did Fell’s body. “Well, I thought that after everything that happened this week we’d be— well, past that.”

“What are you trying to say?”

Fell sneaked glances at her, fingers becoming frolicsome in her lap. “Ah, nothing. It’s just a silly thought.”

That just made Crowley more curious. “I want to hear it anyway.”

“Ah, well… I thought we might be, that is to say if you’re not against it, friends.”

She felt both her eyebrows climb on her forehead. “You… want to be friends.” Fell nodded. “With me.”

“Of course!” She almost vibrated where she sat. “I mean, if you want to.”

“Uh… sure. Sure. Why not?”

Fell’s smile was potent. “Marvelous!”

“Right. Well, I think I’m going to grab a shower.”

“Oh, sure. Make sure you stretch your arms. Stretch them however much you can. Are you sure you don’t want to eat?”

Crowley’s eyes flickered up at the corner of the tray that was sticking out and felt her stomach grumble in displeasure.

“No, I’ll skip.” She got up. “But you can help yourself, if you want to.”

“That’s kind of you, but I’m all right. I ate a bit before coming here.”

Crowley nodded and crossed the mattress, intent on getting to the bathroom.

“You have beautiful eyes, Crowley,” Fell remarked out of nowhere which made Crowley stop at her side. “Such a light brown that it almost looks yellow.”

She huffed. “You mean mustard coloured. I know.”

“No,” Fell said with such surety, that Crowley’s heart stuttered. “They’re the colour of sunflowers at sunset.”

There was no response she could give to that. She stared at this pleasant-looking being and thought that if she lived to reach old age, she would never meet another person quite so striking as Fell. And if old age caught with her, but not with Fell, then— well, the world was a horrible place to live in and Crowley would resent it that much more.

She did stretch her arms as the water beat down on her upper back and nape until the pain subsided. The tiredness left her body, replaced by a foreign feeling of— contentment. Even relaxation.

She looked at her hands, sluiced with water. In a short amount of time Fell dumped on her not only an offer of friendship (which she foolishly accepted) but also complimented her on her weird eye colour. What was this fragile creature doing there, nestling between her long, thin fingers and scarred palms? It should run. Far away from her. She always ended up breaking things and hurting people. She couldn’t even save— 

No. Fell shouldn’t have entrusted her with something so delicate and breakable. Didn’t she know? Wasn’t she aware of who Crowley was? What she couldn’t do? How weak she was? How— how despicable and cold?

Drops of water splattered over her white-knuckled fists, her mohawk covering her eyes, but not the salty drops that ran down along the hot water.

***

“Let’s go,” she said at the end of her first week of training.

“Go where?” 

Fell was leaning back on her pillow, a book in her hand and her reading glasses perched halfway on her nose. Crowley didn’t examine closely what that made her feel.

“Out,” Crowley said.

“But you’ve been training the whole day. Didn’t you complain about sore muscles?”

Crowley continued to dry her wet hair, tank top sticking to her skin on the left side of her back, all too aware of the leggings doing the same in some odd places.

“Not out around the Shatterdome. Out out. Beyond the fence. Out into the city.”

“Out into the city? Why would we go that far?”

“I need a change in scenery. Please?”

Fell put the book down on the desk near her bed, not before placing the old bookmark in it, then took off her glasses and set them on top.

“Well, I don’t know, dear girl. We’d need to ask permission from Marshal to—” 

She was losing Fell to the intricacies that was her need to report to a higher up almost every aspect of her decisions. Something that Crowley had noticed early in their friendship. She needed to act fast.

“I’m not trying to get us in trouble, but I also want to get out of here even if for a few hours. And— I want to show you something. Will you let me guide you?”

Fell’s mouth was open, poised to argue, but then she seemed to reconsider, taking a moment to herself to mull over Crowley’s words and then nodded with determination.

Crowley grinned toothily and pulled on a pair of torn, faded blue denim, the same colour that the crop top jeans jacket she put on next had. Sydney had chill spells during the evening lately, so Crowley chose her usual getup. Not that she had time or even energy to go shop for more clothes than could fit in her backpack. Fell, on the other hand, was already dressed in a moss green button up shirt and her usual cargo pants. On top she pulled a white raincoat.

“You think ‘s gonna rain?”

“They said the weather will be unpredictable, so I think it would be best to be prepared.”

Crowley shrugged and they filed out of the room. Fell knew of enough backdoors that would get them out of the Shatterdome without too many people seeing them. It didn’t matter if they did and reported it back to the Marshal as long as they got out of the fenced perimeter. After that, Crowley’s navigational skills and memory guided them towards the beach.

“Will you tell me what this something that you want to show me is?”

“You’ll see in a moment, come.”

She didn’t dare grab her hand and pull her along. For one, she needed to trust that Fell would follow her and keep up with her fast pace, winding down back streets and climbing garbage bins and fences. It didn’t surprise her that whenever she looked back, Fell was there, a step behind her, looking as if she was enjoying herself. And for two, Crowley didn’t think they were at the stage in their friendship where such casual physical touches were a thing. She still felt like they were in the testing stages of it, and asking Fell about it… would not do.

Crowley was too afraid to break the status quo that settled over them. She reasoned that if Fell wanted their friendship to change, she would surely let Crowley know in some way.

When the wall came into view, Fell stopped. She knew she stopped because her softly thudding boots fell quiet. They were atop a small hill. The buildings rolled down on either side of the street undisturbed by the ease in the terrain, and after the main road that cut the sprawling buildings short, came the yellow-white beach, caressed by the waves of the ocean. 

And beyond all of that, rising up to block half the sky, was the Wall of Life.

“Crowley…”

She smiled back at her. “Come on. We still have a long way.”

“Are you—”

“I know how to get there.”

“You mean on top?” She sounded both excited, but also hesitant, as if she knew that they’d be trespassing and breaking a lot of laws.

Crowley didn’t say anything. They reached the main road, more trafficked than the street they’ve been on. Nobody even looked at them twice, nobody recognized them, which suited Crowley just fine. She had a bit of apprehension that Fell would be known, but she realized that her fame was limited to the people that worked within the Shatterdome.

She’d never piloted a Jaeger in battle because she’d never found a compatible pilot. Her heart squeezed uncomfortably at this new aspect of Fell and when she looked back at her, she was still following Crowley, but her attention was on the wall to their left. There was something forming at the back of Crowley’s head, something that was struggling to take shape, but Crowley couldn’t even guess what it would become.

It took them another twenty minutes to make their way through the dry vegetation that flanked the hill sprawling all the way to the east of the city and the Shatterdome. She found the opening in the fence that allowed them to get to the bridge connecting the wall to the land.

From there on, it was easy because nobody was guarding that passage anymore. Not since the wall had been breached, rendering it a useless piece of concrete and waste of tax money.

They had to climb the ladder to get to the very top of the wall and by the time Fell dragged herself up on the flat surface, they were both sweating and breathing hard. The air up there was cool and humid. At least it wasn’t the cloying warmth on the ground level with the city fumes adding to it. Crowley took off her crop top jacket and tied it to her middle, enjoying the cool breeze on her bare arms and neck.

She sat there on the cold cement, hands supporting her, as she let her head back and closed her eyes, listening to the occasional cry of an albatross and the sound of the wind picking up. From that high up, the city noises were muffled and almost melded in with the natural sounds of the land and water around.

They were facing the city, but when Crowley stood up and looked beyond the wall, across the ocean, she couldn’t distinguish where it ended and the sky began. Fat, dark clouds were travelling towards them, heavy with rain. They looked like they were racing each other towards the city. 

By her side, Fell was gazing in the opposite direction, on the far horizon behind the city. Crowley took in the city lights set against the sunset background. The clash between that molten orange and red and the dark grey clouds eating the sky furiously gave the whole view a surreal feeling, like they’d stumbled into a parallel universe.

Crowley looked at Fell, curious to see how this was affecting her. She was taking everything in as if she had been parched and hadn’t been aware of that until the first drop of water touched her tongue. Crowley smiled, feeling proud of herself for pushing Fell to come there.

“It’s— it’s beyond what words could express! Was this what you wanted—”

“Yes. Like it?”

Fell threw her a befuddled look, as if Crowley was speaking in tongues.

“I love it!”

Crowley didn’t feel the first fat drops of rain hit her because Fell’s smile and the emotion in her voice as she said ‘love’ hit her so hard that she needed a minute to get her bearings again.

There was no cover up there, so the harsh rain beat down on them relentlessly. Crowley stood by Fell’s side as they both watched the city lights, feeling the howling wind biting at her skin along with the sharp raindrops. Just when she repressed a shiver, Fell’s white raincoat covered her from head to mid-thigh.

She opened her mouth to protest, but Fell had her eyes closed, face turned towards the angry sky, stray locks of hair brushing and sticking to her wet face, and Crowley didn’t have it in her to interrupt that, whatever it was.

It looked like she was letting herself _feel_ for the very first time. Feel and _be_ in the present moment. It stunned Crowley into staring at her as much as possible to ingrain the image in her memory.

The sight was making it difficult for her to focus on her breathing— if she was even breathing in that moment.

Everything fell away, the wall, the rain, the cold wind, the city, the Jaeger Programme and the Kaiju attacks. Past and future didn’t exist for Crowley. Just Fell. Fell and her soaked wet serene face as she looked like she was absorbing the rain into her body and coming alive because of it.

Then she grabbed Crowley’s hand in a bone-crushing stronghold and Crowley could breathe again. She squeezed back just as hard, both finding an anchor in the other, something to keep them from simply floating away and dissolving into the wind like ashes.

She stepped closer to Fell on instinct and Fell looked at her, awe and wonder making her eyes shine with so much life and energy, they were almost scintillating. 

In that moment, Crowley felt and understood a vital part of who Fell was. She had no way of putting into words, but she knew— just _knew_ that this moment right here forged something between them that neither would ever be able to forget or ignore.

The creature nestled between her palms grew as Crowley finally accepted and sheltered it behind her ribcage.

She felt weak in the knees, but her grip on Fell’s hand didn’t lessen one bit. Neither let go, even as Crowley wanted to give back the raincoat. It wouldn’t have made a difference, she knew, she knew.

The sun didn’t fully set before the clouds engulfed it and the lights along the rim of the wall facing the city came alive. 

The storm had settled above the city when they re-entered the ‘dome, Crowley insisting Fell take the first shower. She couldn’t get rid of the feeling of Fell’s hand in hers no matter how many times she flexed her fingers, and staring at it didn’t help either. 

***

Perspiration was getting in her left eye beneath the shades, but she couldn’t afford to wipe it off. The enemy was waiting for an opportunity to strike. She wouldn’t be the one to create one.

The tire plastered to her side was hot and the only thing that gave her sweaty body slight reprieve was the salty breeze from the ocean.

Someone cursed on the other side of the big tire and she recognized it as being Michael. After the little talk they had, Gabriel got deep into it, shooting at their opponents without mercy whenever he had an opening.

Crowley snapped her fingers once behind her back to draw his attention. He snapped his back to alert her that he was paying attention, so she motioned with her head towards the well of water on the other side of the landing dock. She risked a glance back and he nodded.

She was out of ammunition and needed a refill, but someone jumped on the tire.

“Hello, Gabriel,” Fell said, grinning as if this was the best time of her life.

Crowley heard Gabriel curse before she saw him lift his gun, but Fell was already pumping hers with a vengeance. She only had a moment to spare the thought that Fell really looked like an avenging angel before she became aware of Michael right there next to Fell and she had time to roll away even as the water soaked through part of her tee on her back.

Michael was as silent as Fell when she was in pursuit. No curse, no grumble, not even goading. Which meant that she was deadly focused on her target. Crowley tried to get under cover, but she only managed to make a drunken beeline towards the well. She didn’t even have time to refill hers because Michael was on her tail.

“The well should be neutral ground!” Crowley shouted from her crouch as she moved towards the opposite side of the well to stay out of Michael’s reach.

“It’s a teamwork exercise,” Zuigiber shot back, the amusement in her voice annoying the hell out of Crowley.

She peeked over the rim of the well at the tire she had been behind moments before. Fell was still on top of it, pumping water at Gabriel who Crowley couldn’t see, but she imagined he was trying to dodge and shoot back at the same time. Momentarily, she was mesmerized by the efficient way Fell changed her water supply, taking out the empty cylinder, shoving it into the empty loop on her belt, take out the full one, press it into her gun and pump water with a focus and precision in her stance that had Crowley forget the situation she was in.

“Where’s your training, Evangelatos?” she heard Fell demand. “Did you forget everything already, sergeant?”

Crowley shook her head and looked to her right. Michael’s eyes were trained on Crowley as if she had been waiting for their gaze to meet before she pumped water, forcing her to duck behind her current shield. Michael was going to run out of ammo, Crowley was sure. Maybe her best option here was to wait her out. 

But Michael wasn’t stupid. She might love to play with her target like a cat with a mouse, but she seldom let her guard down.

Crowley moved to the other side as she heard Michael come after her.

Then Gabriel cursed and grunted, and Crowley peeked around to see what was happening. Fell had jumped off the tire and Gabriel had taken refuge behind the stacked tire wall that was a few heads taller than Fell. And she saw that Michael’s attention had been diverted.

Perfect opportunity!

She risked letting her gun on the ground as she plunged two reserves into the well.

By the time Michael turned her attention towards Crowley, she was shoving one reserve into her gun before she stood up, shooting openly at her opponent.

Michael returned the fire, seemingly uncaring that she was getting wetter by the second, even if Crowley’s aim wasn’t that good, what with her trying to side-step the water shots she received.

Crowley was moving into a semi-circle, trying to get to Gabriel and offer some support, Michael turning on herself, keeping Crowley in her line of sight.

But then Michael moved to the side and stepped bad or something, because the next she saw was the woman losing her balance. She stepped back to try and regain it and promptly hit the well, plunging into it with an unlikely squawk.

**28 minutes before**

Three days into her two weeks, Crowley arrived at the usual spot for training, prepared for three hours of gruelling workout, rope jumping with boots that weighed three kilos each among the most taxing. But she found that the place had undergone some changes. There were a few big tires scattered around the area, plus a few normal-sized tires stacked on top of each other, acting as tall shields.

But that was not the only new thing there. Michael and Gabriel were chatting with Zuigiber.

“What’s this?” Crowley asked Fell as they separated to go around a big well filled with water.

She’d taken to come with Crowley and drop her off before she went to help around the Jaegers. They hadn’t talked about it, but Crowley was content with the way things were and Fell seemed to share that sentiment. 

“I’m not sure. Perhaps Michael and Gabriel want advice on their training or they’re inviting Carmine to it.”

“Really? They like pain that much?”

Zuigiber’s eagle gaze found Crowley in a split second and a shark’s grin spread on her lips. She shuddered at the prospect of finding out that that whole setup was going to hurt more than the pilates exercises with weights.

“Perfect,” Zuigiber said, “you’re both here. We can start.”

Gabriel threw Crowley the stink eye while Michael looked at them both without showing anything on her face.

“Carmine, could you tell us what this is all about?” Fell said, sounding as confused as Crowley felt.

She didn’t answer right away as she stepped off to one of the big tires and took— were those kids’ guns? Yellow and blue and faded red. Zuigiber threw one at Fell and she caught it out of reflex. Both she and Crowley stared at it, and something akin to giddiness filled Crowley’s gut as suspicion was starting to look more like reality. She received the same gun, followed by Michael — because she was closest — and then Gabriel.

Zuigiber blew her whistle. Oh, Crowley was ready for whatever this was going to be!

“A’ight, pilots. This is a team-building exercise. Word reached my ears that there’s been some discomfort between your teams. I’ve been charged with helping you kids settle down the bad blood.” She grinned toothily at that. “The following game is designed to help you trust your partner.”

Without even thinking, Crowley edged closer to Fell. Zuigiber saw that because she was secretly both a shark and an eagle and nothing escaped her attention. Crowley only wished she stopped grinning like a serial killer about to flay her open. Seriously. Two out of three nights she had a nightmare featuring that smile and that stupid whistle.

“Crowley will team up with Gabriel and—” even before she finished his name, protests were rising from everyone, _“and_ Aziraphale will be partnered with Michael. Questions?”

No fucking way! She’d jump in the ocean with a rock tied to her feet before she trusted Gabriel with her back. It seemed that she wasn’t the only one thinking the same since Gabriel’s voice was the loudest out of them all.

The grin only sharpened in response. “No questions? Wonderful!” she clapped her hands once and spoke over them. “The scope of the game is to get at least one player from the opposite team wet from head to toe to win.”

Crowley squinted up even through her shades. With how hot it was outside, it was going to be a long game.

“Where do we even refill our guns?” Crowley asked, even as she wondered when the fuck did she accept that bullshit game and the annoying arsehole she was stuck with.

Zuigiber threw each one a belt with three water reserves already filled. The mechanism of the water guns were made in such a way as to only need to push the plastic cylinder into the repository to be ready. Not bad.

“And if we finish our reserves?” Fell asked from a few paces over where she stood by Michael’s side. Not as close as she had stood with Crowley, she noticed with unusual discomfort in her stomach.

Zuigiber pointed to the well she and Fell side-stepped when they came by.

“That’s your water supply.”

“Do we have a time limit?” Michael asked, keeping the water gun in the crook of her elbow as if she was holding a rifle.

“The first one to get soaked wet ends the game. I’ll be up there,” she pointed at a crane truck near the Shatterdome’s wall where the shade was, “monitoring you.”

“What disqualifies a team?” Gabriel asked.

“Working solo,” she looked pointedly at Gabriel, then at Crowley, “turning on your partner, pushing the other players in the sea, pushing the tires on top of another player. Forfeiting before a team loses, dropping your weapon, or trying to overpower your opponents with anything else but the water in your guns nets both teams an hour long circuit with no break.”

Crowley groaned, knowing how fucking inhuman that was. She only did one a few days ago and even Fell’s magical hands didn’t alleviate the soreness afterwards.

“We’re ready,” Gabriel announced, squaring his shoulders.

“Speak for your damn self,” Crowley grumbled, shifting the water gun in her hands.

“Did you say anything, newbie?” He stepped threateningly towards her.

Oh! It was fucking on! She closed the last bit of distance between them, lifting her head up to breathe hot air into his stupid face, absently seeing Fell taking a few steps forward from the corner of her eye.

“Yes, block-head. You can go punt yourself into the ocean for all I care.”

He sneered, even as ire was gathering in his eyes. Zuigiber whistled sharply, once, but Crowley heard the muttered, “see how much help you get from me, street dog.”

“A’ight! Everyone take your positions and wait for my signal.”

Crowley took shelter behind the furthest tire-wall, close to the edge of the landing dock. Gabriel ducked behind the big tire in the middle, putting him in her direct line of sight.

Her fingers twitched and she pointed her gun at his back.

Zuigiber blew her whistle and Crowley lowered her gun. She wasn’t sure she’d be able to cover that arsehole’s back.

Within the next ten minutes each one had multiple damp patches on themselves. Crowley’s hair was completely wet and dripping and Gabriel’s faded purple trousers were soaked through. She hadn’t expected Michael to go after him with such precision and— well, it wasn’t quite vengeance, but she had a little smile on her lips every time she managed to get her partner wet— 

And no. She wasn’t going there. She really, really wasn’t going there.

“Will you fucking stop hestitating shooting Fell? We’re not a mercy squad! We’re here to win!” Gabriel’s laborious breathing was part from the ducking and rolling he’d been doing as if he was in a fucking blockbuster action movie and part because the sun reached its peak. There must have been at least 40 degrees Celsius.

She kept thinking that either team would lose because one of them sweated too much. Seriously, couldn’t they have done this inside where there was shade?

“Shut up and stop rolling around like a pig and cover me,” Crowley griped back as Gabriel pointed his gun over the tire and pumped water at Fell. Half of her back got wet before she took cover.

“Can’t. I’m out.”

“What?”

“I’m out of ammo!” Gabriel raised his voice a little, shaking his gun. Crowley didn’t even look at him.

“Of course you are. You’ve been shooting at them like a lunatic. Half the time you didn’t even hit them! Fucking wasteful!”

“Will you shut up and cover me?”

Crowley made faces, but didn’t say anything as Gabriel moved behind her back, intent on reaching the well. The tricky bit was the distance between the half circle of tires and the well. There was no cover. So Crowley followed Gabriel, both ducking near the end of the last big tire in the middle.

“On my three,” Crowley said, peeking over the edge then ducking back. “Make a run for it.”

Gabriel nodded as serious as Crowley had ever seen him without being angry. Weird asshole. It was a game, not fucking war. But maybe that was the thing. She knew from bits of information she gathered from Fell, Anathema and Newt that all three pilots had military backgrounds of some kind. She knew nothing of them participating in any war, but they all received training in preparation for that.

Following this moment of insight, Crowley returned the serious nod and positioned herself above the tire.

“Three!” she barked and Gabriel tore off like a bullet.

As she expected, Michael’s gun and half of her body peeked from the tire wall and Crowley focused her water towards her. Those guns must have been modified somehow because the distance they could pump was far greater than what she’d seen at kids on the playground.

And then Gabriel slipped and almost fell into the well. His arm got soaked through, though, as it was the one that saved him.

She snorted, gaze pointed at the tire walls to find Michael.

“Karma’s a bitch!” Crowley yelled with glee.

“I agree, my dear,” came Fell’s pleasant voice and Crowley had time to step back and fall on her arse as Fell took another step forward and soaked the front of Crowley’s tee completely.

She couldn’t even muster anger, let alone words, because Fell looked like she was enjoying herself immensely. After Fell ducked behind the opposite wall of tires, Crowley realized that the only reason she left was because she emptied the last of her reserve on Crowley.

A shadow fell over her head and she looked up.

“You done mooning over the enemy?” Gabriel said as if he was considering rolling his eyes, but didn’t have time for that.

Crowley squirted the last of her loaded reserve into Gabriel’s face, hoping Zuigiber didn’t see that.

“Real mature,” he said, not moving a muscle, and Crowley mimicked his words to show him how mature she was.

Behind him, Michael and Fell were taking advantage of the reprieve she and Gabriel allowed them to refill their reserves.

“This is war,” Crowley growled, moving to a squat.

“No,” Gabriel sat on his hunches to be at eye level, “it’s a game. And we’re going to win it.”

Crowley glanced up at him as she put on the last of her reserves. “Deal.”

**Now**

Crowley stared at the well.

The grunts and ongoing conversation behind her back stopped almost at once. Then Michael broke the surface of the water, gasping for air, and Crowley began laughing, and the more she did, the harder it was to stop, leaning back and hugging her stomach because it was starting to hurt.

Fell and Gabriel joined her, though theirs were chuckles and not stomach-cramping, throat-aching guffaws, and the only one among them who wasn’t participating in the collective laughter was the wet cat in the well who shot them murderous looks and made Crowley laugh all the harder.

Zuigiber’s whistle cut through the air like a knife through a drop of water.

“Gabriel and Crowley’s team wins.”

“That’s not fair!” Michael stood up, and Gabriel went to help her out of the well, laughter imprinted on his jerk face. “It was an accident!”

“Accidents happen in love and war,” Crowley said, Fell at her side.

“That’s not how that one goes!” Michael grumbled, and passed her gun to Gabriel who took it and said something that only Michael heard. It didn’t seem to change her annoyed expression much, but her wet cat look improved a bit.

Zuigiber joined them in the middle of the dock, the smile she was sporting looking more genuinely amused than genuinely prone to murder.

“Well done, both teams,” she began. “You managed to find middle ground and work together. Today’s training, for all parties involved, has been a success.” She was looking at Crowley specifically. “Anyone have anything to say? I accept criticism.”

“Next time let’s do paintball teamed with our original partners,” Gabriel suggested, his gaze trained on Crowley.

“Oh, it’s on!” Crowley accepted the challenge. “I’ll turn you so blue, you’ll make your Jaeger blush!”

“Dream on, recruit. You’ll pick paint off yourself for weeks afterwards.”

Zuigiber and Fell chuckled, and even Michael smiled at the friendly banter between her and Gabriel. She had to admit, she hadn’t expected the game to work; she certainly hadn’t expected herself to roll with it and shift the anger she’d stocked for him to something that was closer to camaraderie than friendship. 

And yes, it was the configuration of the game that allowed for that change of perspective. Never let it be said that Crowley wasn’t a competitive arsehole; add to that her survival instincts, and whatever beef she had had with Gabriel became unimportant in the face of winning that game. She could say the same about Gabriel, and would you look at that? She discovered a side of Gabriel that she could relate to.

But she’d still kick his arse to high heavens, if the occasion arose.

Until then, she’d take this, begrudging respect and understanding.

Fell seemed happy with the outcome, and Crowley found that it was enough for her to count this as a win and progress. Maybe Crowley could find a place for herself in the Shatterdome, in the programme. Maybe the stubbornness fuelling her continued stay there and Fell’s continued confidence in her potential raked something unexpectedly good for her.

She only hoped she’d be able to keep this.

***

The next day, Carmine Zuigiber and her co-pilot, a certain D. E. A. Terry, were transferred to Hong Kong to help.

There was no lost love between her and Zuigiber, but she and Fell did see them off. Zuigiber winked from her seat in the helicopter before it took off and Crowley wasn’t sure if it was meant for her or Fell, but it didn’t matter.

Their departure meant that Crowley had no trainer and she was a few days away from the appointment she hadn’t made with Fell’s mind. 

Later that day, Fell told her that they were going to be training together for the rest of the week and that Fell would oversee it. Crowley thought she could shirk the spartan regime, but if anything else, Fell proved to take it just as seriously as Zuigiber.

Well, bollocks.


	5. Flashes (Present)

**Vladivostok Shatterdome, 1200 hours**

***

They were making progress, at least that was what Anathema told her earlier. She suspected it was just a ploy to get her out of the lab because she tended to loom over people when she was impatient. The mess hall there was decidedly smaller than the one in Sydney, but no less crowded. The food was different, more meat-and-fat-based than anything else. She had put on a few kilos in the months since she’d been there and certain jeans were pushed to the bottom of her pile of clothes. Not that she’d brave the freakish weather outside in jeans.

She picked up her tray and moved along the line to get to the pork stew section, a dish Anathema found she liked. If Crowley couldn’t be in the lab as much as she’d like, then she wanted to make sure that their neuroscientist was fed at least one warm meal a day.

One of the kitchen staff came out, and with her a wall of warmth hit Crowley. All at once, she smelled salty water and before she realized what was happening, she— 

_“You don't interact much with Gabriel,” Crowley said, her huffs misting white before disappearing fast as she jogged down along the lazy lapping sea._

_Zuigiber expressly told her to make a habit of it or else._

_She wasn’t interested in knowing what that ‘else’ was because she liked running, so she didn’t see a problem with it. Plus, if she ran along the beach early enough, she could use the heat of the sun when it fully rose up to stop because she was bad at listening to her aching muscles. But she wasn’t a morning person, so since Fell ended up waking her up every morning, she didn’t see anything wrong with keeping Crowley company._

_“There's nothing to interact about.”_

_“But you two know each other,” Crowley pressed._

_Fell nodded, her ponytail swinging rhythmically along her shoulders. They’d only done one lap of the stretch of the beach and now they were running back towards the Shatterdome._

_“He and Holyworth were assigned on my team a year prior to me coming here to train as a pilot.”_

_“Holyworth?”_

_Fell smiled. “Michael.”_

_“You fought together.”_

_She nodded. “We were the task force in charge of rescuing as many people as we could when a Kaiju attacked. The teams were always made of those who had nerves of steel, which also meant that more often than not those people were also stubborn and would ignore orders on field.”_

_“That doesn’t sound— stable.” She winced as soon as the words were out._

_The grin that crested Fell’s lips was ferocious. “It wasn’t. We were like a ghost rogue division. The government would have thrown us under the bus faster than an Air Force response, if critical missions became utter failures.”_

_“That means that you could only rely on your team to have your back— and sanity.”_

_“Less sanity, more my back. The soldiers in my team all had baggage. I was the only one with less and the one better at compartmentalizing. Then Holyworth and Evangelatos were added to my team after two of us died in a previous mission, and the team stabilized. They both have their heads on their shoulders and it helped even out the odds.”_

_“Of someone going off.” Fell nodded again as they turned around and started the third circuit. “So you know them, Evan— Gabriel and Michael, better than most here.”_

_“I know them enough to know their strengths and weaknesses.”_

_“That doesn’t sound like you talk with each other.”_

_“We do communicate.”_

_“But not outside of missions and Jaegers. Not going out to a pub and spending a couple of hours over a few pints.”_

_“No.”_

_“Speaking of. What do you say?”_

_“About what?”_

_“Pub. Us. Outing?”_

_Fell huffed a quiet laugh, finally her breath getting more winded. “Such eloquence.” Crowley grinned, the morning chill feeding her boldness. “I suppose we could go sometimes.”_

Something sharp poked her in the back and when she turned her head, a tall man was urging her to move up the line. When she looked forward, there was a huge empty gap between her and the last person in front of her. With a muttered excuse in Russian, she swiftly went and piled her tray with food for two people and then left the mess hall.


	6. Drift (Past)

**Sydney Shatterdome, 0900 hours**

Twenty-three months ago

***

Crowley hadn’t realized this before, but after two weeks of harsh training and supervised diet, she was filling out the drive suit quite well. The undersuit stretched over her skin, making her feel the places where her muscle mass developed. She wasn’t skin and bone anymore, but neither buff. She had the kind of muscles that Olympic runners and swimmers had. She also felt more energetic and less antsy.

There was a certain confidence in her step now, as if she instinctively knew that the ground would not shift under her feet at a moment’s notice. It was incredible!

“Now,” Fell said as she kept pace with her, because Crowley forgot to match Fell’s shorter stride. “How much do you remember from what Anathema told you about neural handshakes?”

“Uh, the gist of it is that I shouldn’t follow rabbits.”

“R.A.B.I.T. Random Access Brain Impulse Triggers. Memories. It will be inevitable for them to surface, both for you and for me. What you must remember is to let them flow. Don’t latch onto them.”

Crowley nodded. It still sounded very much abstract. The piece of machinery she had connected to the first time after the combat had been smooth and cold and had no thoughts or memories. It just felt like a steel blanket that she could push as much as she wanted, but she wasn’t getting out of it.

“What about you?” Crowley asked. “Aren’t you afraid you’ll chase a memory?”

Fell smiled. “I’ve had a lot of failed neural handshakes to know what to expect. I’ll be all right.”

They entered the command room and were promptly intercepted by Marshal who was already there, overseeing the buzzing room.

“Ranger Fell, Ms Crowley,” she greeted them.

“Marshal,” Fell said and Crowley nodded, not repeating the greeting.

“How are things this morning?”

“As good as they can be,” Fell answered, then looked at Crowley inviting her to add something to it.

“I think I’m ready, ma’am.”

“There’s no place for doubt here, Ms Crowley. Are you ready or are you not?”

Crowley glanced at the room at large, the people talking and coordinating on computers, no doubt preparing for her and Fell’s drift.

“I am, ma’am.”

Marshal nodded curtly. “Mr Choi,” she said, turning on her heels towards the Loccent Command. 

The man swiveled in his chair. “Everything’s ready for the neural handshake.”

Fell nodded and Crowley followed her out.

The technicians fixed the rest of their suit and she received a disc while a metal claw attached itself to her spine. The console, a few paces in front of her, was lit with multiple lights and the screen that showed the curvature of the Loccent room’s glass windows had several commands pouring down like it was a monitor. She looked to her right as they finished setting Fell up.

“Now.” Fell tapped some keys in the little computer they had above them. “Remember that it will feel a bit invasive at first, and you might feel the impulse to shut me out. Try to resist that.”

Crowley grinned, feeling only half as apprehensive and antsy as two weeks ago. “Ignore my gut feeling. Got it.”

Fell threw her a glance and smiled a bit. “Something like that. I will try to make it as smooth as I can, but one never knows how one reacts to this. Especially since you’ve never done this before with a person. You’ll find that it is quite different from the equipment you were tested on.”

“I should hope so.” She was still grinning, unable to quite tamper down the jitters. “That piece of metal had no emotion or thoughts. Felt like I’d be floating endlessly in a cool void.”

Another short smile. “This won’t be the same.”

“How does it feel?” It might have been a bit too late to ask that, but Crowley had had enough on her plate to be excused for forgetting this little detail. 

“Like stepping into a live stream that knows you inside out? It’s hard to put into words. For me it always felt like that. You might have a different opinion.”

“But won’t we be connected? Our minds. Won’t it feel the same to me?”

The smile, this time, was apologetic. “I’ve only managed to drift for a few minutes at a time. The other person always said that it felt like trying to wade through rocks and sand.”

Crowley frowned.

_Right hemisphere, calibrated. Left hemisphere, calibrated. Ready to activate Engagement Protocol._

_“Prepare for neural handshake,”_ Marshal said in their helmets.

 _“Initiating neural handshake,”_ Mr Choi added.

“Crowley,” Fell called and she looked at her, “stay in the drift. The drift is silence.”

Here we go, was what Crowley thought before she felt her mind being sucked in through a straw.

***

The Crowley that stood on the wall was a scarecrow. A small scarecrow that resembled a crow in the way her nose curved in like a beak, dressed in rags and colours that clashed with each other and looked feathery, eyes big and sunken, mouth chapped and skin wrinkly. The only thing that Aziraphale recognized was the wispy red hair, still so vibrant and alive. She shrunk into herself once Aziraphale touched the ground, the black and molten gold surroundings playing memories that she also saw inside her mind, mingling with her own. Instinctively, she tried to soothe and warm the small creature, her distress and coldness feeling as if it was coming from inside Aziraphale. 

“Angel,” she whispered, and Aziraphale saw herself through Crowley’s eyes and smiled.

She had _wings._ Big, arching, vibrant white that turned gold in waves. A crown of light engulfed the top of her head, and kind eyes that shimmered like lapis lazuli in clear water watched Crowley.

“Not quite, my dear.”

“Well,” Crowley croaked, “this is me.” She closed her eyes, waiting for judgement.

“Why are you hiding?”

“What.”

“You’re showing me a representation of yourself. It’s not who you are.”

“I— it’s— this is me. I’m— this. This. It’s me.” And then brokenly, “‘s all I have.”

Aziraphale touched the wrinkly cheek, warming it up. 

“My dear, it’s not. Let me _see_ you.”

There was a moment of resistance, like a hook snagging in the wrong loop and being difficult to let go, but then it did and the scarecrow melted into pure light. She felt Crowley grow taller and fuller, felt her fill with the warmth that she craved, and when she drew in her first, real breath, Aziraphale felt the knot in her chest dissolve and something else replaced it.

When Crowley finally looked back at her, pure light and wings that curved over Aziraphale’s, a moment of recognition fluctuated between them. A whisper of knowledge of the other that passed through both of them without them ever saying or thinking a word.

“Hi,” Crowley said out loud, needing the anchor in her own mind, along the connection.

Aziraphale’s bubbly laughter filled her so completely that the vibrations of her voice were the vibrations in Crowley’s throat, and the stretch of her cheeks was the stretch of Crowley’s, bodies made of light merging with each other in the next breath. There was no separation between them, no barrier, no dam. Their minds were one, connected as if they had never been apart.

The recognition from earlier thrummed between them, so vast and full that Aziraphale realized at the same time as Crowley did that they’d both been searching for this without knowing.

It couldn’t have been more than a second before their memories, thoughts, and emotions blended in like two rivers converging, leaving behind weightlessness and room to breathe.

Just as the memories began mixing with each other, one by one, layer after layer, going deeper and deeper inside both their minds, an increasing sense of panic was building behind Crowley’s back like a tidal wave taking its sweet time to crash.

 _I’m here,_ Aziraphale said, her mind like a balm of calmness keeping her steady. Right behind those words, an echo followed, _I’ll always be._

The sentiment that evoked had both of them feel like they staggered and the connection between them wavered — Aziraphale’s mind stumbled for a split second, wanting to pull back the extended invitation and protection her mind was, and reconsidering that at the same time.

But that was all it took.

The wave crashed into Crowley, pushing forth a memory she thought she’d done a good job at burying. If only.

The first thing that she- _they_ see is a familiar plush unicorn, almost black from soot and dust, and as she _they_ pick it up, she _hey_ notice the sewn tear at its nape. Red, but almost black, the same one she _ey_ took an hour to sew as Shem was sleeping, finally crashing after crying his heart out because he failed to take care of his unicorn.

She doesn’t even remember where she found the needle and the bit of thread, but she clutches the unicorn because it’s tangible and because she still wants to hope. 

Hope. 

Hope as she rushes to turn the corner and what she sees stops her heart in her chest. She cannot reach the kids under the fallen house, no matter how much she digs, always in sight but not near enough to touch, and there’s only one still breathing, the boy, Shem, whose unicorn she clutches, who says, “unicorn, found my unicorn? She’s scared. Bring her to me. Unicorn. Where…” and it’s Crowley’s hands that show the unicorn, but it’s both their anguish that stings her dry eyes, shock so big that she can’t even cry. 

The unicorn stays in her hands.

And the Kaiju screeches somewhere behind.

And the ground shakes.

And the rubbles of the safehouse crumble.

And the kids are gone.

And Crowley’s throat — _their throat_ — is bleeding.

And bleeding.

And bleeding.

And what Aziraphale saw was the cockpit— 

_Neural handshake terminated. Test unsuccessful. Try again. Neural handshake terminated. Te—_

The metal arm keeping her steady disengaged, and she rushed towards Crowley, helmet thrown away, catching her as the steel arm let go of her. Her eyes were glazed over and her body was completely limp as Aziraphale laid her on the floor. 

“Crowley? Crowley! Come back, Crowley! Come back to me,” she kept saying, gloved hand gripping her jaw and shaking her when it wasn’t passing over her face to try to get a response from her open, unseeing eyes.

The steel door hissed open and the technicians rushed in along with Doctor Tracy.

“She’s not answering me,” Aziraphale told Tracy as the doctor placed her medical bag on the floor nearby and Aziraphale was motioned to step away. “She chased the R.A.B.I.T. I tried to pull her back, but— we both— the memory was so strong.”

Tracy flashed a light in both eyes, then checked her pulse, and then rummaged for something in her bag.

“The memory induced her in a state of REM sleep,” Tracy said, her voice steady and unhurried as she took out a small glass bottle, then waved at the two technicians hovering nearby. 

They quickly sat Crowley up, Aziraphale’s heart squeezing at the way her head just lolled to one side, face a blank mask of a drugged, unresponsive person, and unscrewed the chestplate, then laid her back on the floor.

Aziraphale kept leaning forward, then drawing back as if she wanted to be right there next to Crowley, but finding she’d simply breathe too much oxygen and Crowley wouldn’t have enough.

Tracy took a pair of scissors and swiftly cut a path between Crowley’s breasts then tested the area. When she took out a big syringe and drew the liquid from the vial, Aziraphale’s heart nearly stopped in her chest.

“What— what’s that for?”

“She’s stuck in the memory. It became a dream. I'm pumping her full of epinephrine to jump-start her heart.”

Aziraphale watched in frozen horror as Tracy plunged what looked like half of the syringe into Crowley’s chest, but that couldn’t have been right because Crowley was still so, _so_ thin, that surely must have passed right through— 

And impossibly, Aziraphale felt a flicker and a pull at the same time as Crowley drew in a startled breath, her glazed eyes widening as she coughed air and tried to get away from Tracy. The doctor was swift to take the syringe back, even as Aziraphale kept her there, knowing that Tracy needed to clean the puncture and put a bandaid on it. 

“You’re all right,” Aziraphale said, trying to pull her crazed, panicked attention towards her, give a focus and reassure her. “You’re all right, Crowley! You’re in Zephyr’s cockpit. We drifted, and we chased your R.A.B.I.T., but you’re all right.”

She blinked rapidly, then groaned as she massaged her chest and winced when she felt the pain from the puncture of the syringe.

Tracy came closer and pulled away her hands to flash a light in her eyes. “You’re fine, dearie. A bit stunned from the epinephrine. You might feel overly energetic and restless for the next couple of hours until your body assimilates it. I advise you to not over-exert yourself. Here.”

She peeled off the backside of a bandaid and neated it over Crowley’s chest. 

“This will keep off microbes. But you should take it off tonight and let the skin breathe.”

Crowley nodded and then looked up, behind Tracy which prompted Aziraphale to follow her gaze. Marshal was there, inside the cockpit, and near her Anathema, hugging a black square to her chest.

“Are you two all right?” Anathema said.

“I believe so,” Aziraphale looked back at Crowley who only nodded once, a hand keeping the torn edges of her undersuit over her chest. 

She allowed herself to get close to Crowley, a hand touching her shoulder gently. Crowley looked at her and smiled, a soft thing that ticked the corners of her mouth and pulled at Aziraphale like a lifeline. She could feel the phantom pain in her chest and Crowley’s dizziness. Without even thinking, she pushed comfort and reassurance and Crowley leaned towards her arm.

“The neural handshake has been partially successful,” Marshal’s commanding tone filled the space, but Aziraphale had eyes only for Crowley. “We’ll need a second test. Doctor Device.”

“Yes. I have the scans from your first test and I have to say, your brain waves are a very rare sight. You were perfectly synced for an entire minute before you chased the R.A.B.I.T. What intrigues me,” Anathema said, lowering her voice, “is that you chased the memory alongside Crowley, instead of trying to pull her back.”

Aziraphale pulled Crowley’s head into the crook of her neck, arms coming around her (still thin) body as protection.

“The memory was strong,” Aziraphale said.

“Ranger, you have to explain more than that.”

Aziraphale looked at her own mother, feeling fiercely protective of the knowledge she now had of Crowley. The words that clogged her throat in that moment ran along the lines of ‘ _she’s mine’_ and only Crowley’s hand tightening on her hip dispelled the sudden protective anger.

“We were one,” she began, arms tightening around Crowley, “her thoughts were mine and my thoughts were hers. The more memories we shared the stronger the connection was. It was my fault,” she murmured.

“Liar,” Crowley said, half-muffled into her neck.

“It was. I broke the sync and before I realized it, we were chasing the memory.”

Anathema stared at her for a long moment. “That must’ve been the blip in the graphic that preceded the R.A.B.I.T.”

“The memory was too strong,” she repeated, burying her mouth into Crowley’s hair, feeling the prickle of her undercut on her chin.

“Now, if we’re done with the questioning,” Tracy interrupted, “these two girls need to rest.”

“Tomorrow morning,” Marshal ordered, “at 0800 sharp I want you two here for a second test.”

Aziraphale nodded and people filed out of the cockpit, except Anathema. She knelt by Crowley’s side.

“Is she all right?”

“She is. Still dizzy and trying not to empty her stomach.” She threw Anathema a surprised look, not expecting that.

Anathema grinned. “Drift leaking. Studies show that it’s quite common among Jaeger pilots. I’m doing a paper on it exploring the post-drift leaking and if that affects the duration of the leakage or it’s a matter of brain compatibility.” Her enthusiasm was met with patience from Aziraphale. She knew how much work she put into that paper. “You’ll feel each other’s emotions and, to some extent, your intentions beforehand for a few hours.”

Crowley made an effort to pull up her head and squint at Anathema. Her eyes were extremely sensitive in that moment, Aziraphale could feel the phantom stings in her own eyes.

“Is that a good or a bad thing?”

“You tell me,” she said, utterly amused by the situation. “It’s you who’ll feel Aziraphale’s emotions and she yours.”

A wave of nausea hit Aziraphale like a bat coming from left field because it wasn’t hers.

“I think I want to pass out now.”

That snapped her out of exploring this new perspective. “There, there, my dear. We need to get back to our room before you can do that.”

Anathema chatted with them on their way, going into details about the neural handshake and how much they still didn’t know about it, but then their paths diverged and Anathema took another corridor back to her lab.

“How do you feel?” asked Aziraphale once she shut the door. “If you want to, you can take my bed. I don’t need it right now.”

Crowley had her hands on the back of the chair. There was a certain buzzing that Aziraphale could hear, but she wasn’t sure where it was coming from. If it was her ears acting up (which never happened unless she received a blow to her head) or something else.

“I failed,” Crowley said and there was no trace of slurring or tiredness, just quiet anger.

“No, you didn’t.”

She whirled around, and Aziraphale expected that instinctually. Now that they’d drifted, she felt as if the door separating them was left ajar and light, sounds and emotions oozed slowly between them.

“If anything else,” Aziraphale said fast, to not let Crowley get into another demeaning tirade about her apparent shortcomings, “I failed to pull you back.”

“What the hell are you saying? My fucked up past is not your fault!”

“No, but I’m supposed to have your back in the drift. You’re my co-pilot and I’m supposed to take care of your mental well-being.”

Crowley frowned, parsing through what Aziraphale said. “That’s not true, and you know it. ‘S not how drifts work.”

Well, so much for little, innocent white lies. Crowley could either feel the untruth in the words or she had paid more attention to Anathema’s lecture than she let on.

“Even so, I followed you down the rabbit hole, as they say, without trying to get you back out. It’s my fault.”

Crowley growled. “Will you fucking stop taking the blame on yourself every time I fuck shit up?!” That took Aziraphale by surprise. “I dragged both of us down,” she continued, pacing around the room, careful to not step on the mattress on the floor, “because that’s what I do! I drag people down and they never get up! You saw—”

“What I saw was a tragedy—”

“Welcome to my life.”

“— that you could not have prevented.”

“Oh no! You won’t spin this away from the ugly truth: I let them die there!” Her voice broke towards the end, as if the anger couldn’t reach that far down where sorrow, pain and guilt lived.

It might have been the drift leaking between them, Crowley’s emotions spilling and mixing with Aziraphale, but she felt her calm and composed state of mind fraying at the ends; water filling her lungs and slowly suffocating her.

“You went to get food for those children!” Aziraphale raised her voice, anger fuelling her the more she talked, stalking towards Crowley. “How many days had it been since you last had a decent meal, hm? How many? Your top priority ever since you took them under your protection months before had been to provide basic human necessities for them! Don’t think I didn’t see that.”

Pain and anger intermingled, her own voice becoming thick and broken with how much she felt. For the first time in a long time, her own emotions got the better of her, spilling over the edge like an overfull bucket, and all because this beautiful soul stepped into her life and left her feeling both vulnerable and powerful. There was an earthquake building up, growing with each word out of her mouth. She feared she might not survive it, if it broke off.

Crowley’s backtracking was stopped by the desk and Aziraphale forgot everything she knew about boundaries as she crowded her, their chests touching. Her voice shook with emotion when she voiced her next thoughts, and by the look on Crowley’s face, she knew they were coming a moment before she heard them.

“You loved those children more than you’ve ever loved yourself or another being!”

“Stop, please,” Crowley implored, her face crumbling into despair and pain, but Aziraphale was too deep in.

“You gave them everything that was within your power and they loved you so much.”

They were both crying now, the door between them forced open more.

“You didn’t fail, my dear,” she continued, voice choke full of emotion, “you gave them more than shelter. You were there for them at every turn. That is more than a lot of people in this world can say. Your devotion to them is what saved them.” 

Crowley was shaking her head. “I killed them. I knew we had to move place, that it wasn’t safe, but the job— that damn thing took forever. They wanted to check everything.” She swallowed thickly, fat tears spilling over her rosy cheeks and Aziraphale dried them away with her thumbs, cradling her head between her palms.

“You couldn’t have known,” she murmured, catching and holding those gorgeous amber eyes. “You couldn’t have known that a Kaiju would breach the miracle mile. Apocalypse Four was the only one around to fight it off. Gabriel and Michael had been sent to Los Angeles.”

But she was shaking her head, dislodging Aziraphale’s hands and bending down as if to block Aziraphale’s words.

“I killed them.”

“No, you were there for them when they had no one. You’ve sheltered them for months, gave them back a semblance of normality which is more than—”

“I killed them!” Crowley shouted.

The pain Aziraphale received in response, both visually from Crowley’s teary eyes and from the connection between them, almost knocked the breath out of her. 

“Please, no more,” Crowley whispered, bending down, the pain suffocating. “No more, please, Aziraphale.”

She was already leaning back, ready to give her space when she heard her name uttered so brokenly that every instinct in her body compelled her to not let go— never let go.

Crowley shuddered when Aziraphale gathered her to her chest, arms squeezing this imperfect, kind being to herself, wishing she could put every broken piece back together.

It took Crowley a while to melt into her embrace, her own arms coming around Aziraphale’s back to cling to her undersuit. They both cried on each other’s shoulders, properly mourning the deaths of innocent lives for the first time since Crowley lost them.

“I’m here,” Aziraphale whispered into her hair, placing kisses in it and threading her fingers through it. “I’ve got you. I’m here, my dear.”

That seemed to have broken a dam in Crowley because her silent crying turned into hiccoughs and wails, her arms trying to crush Aziraphale within them. But she was strong and she tightened her hold back, keeping Crowley there, safe and protected.

Crowley was hers. She already knew that, no need for the drift to tell her something that her gut had been feeling for a while now.

They belonged to each other and with each other.


	7. Bar

***

“Shouldn’t that be worrisome?” Newt asked, twirling his half-drunk glass of pale ale.

“Pshh, nothing to worry there,” Anathema replied with a flutter of her hand, while the other one was curled around her glass of Sangria as if she was worried someone might take it from her. She’d asked for double the normal amount of brandy. “You should’ve seen Tendo’s face the first time he saw the drift percentage.” She giggled. “I’m telling you, his eyes almost popped out of his sockets. ‘Twas awesome.”

“I don’t think someone’s eyes popping out is awesome.”

Anathema laid a reassuring hand on Newt’s shoulder. “Sorry, love. I know you’re squeamish about these things.” She leaned in and kissed his cheek.

Crowley, sat right across Newt, leaned towards Aziraphale. “Why are they here, again?” she whispered heatedly. She wished she could still feel Aziraphale’s emotions, but that door had closed not long ago, probably because the drift hadn’t held for long.

Aziraphale turned an amused smile towards her. “They’ve been cooped up in the shatterdome just like us. I thought it’d do them good to join us on this unsanctioned escapade.”

She grimaced, still not appeased.

“What’s that face, Crowley?” Anathema said, pointing a finger at her. Definitely a measure too much brandy in her ‘girly’ drink. “I know you don’t like me, but I like you because Azira _ pharael _ here likes you, so don’t make that face at me.”

Figures the scientist was a lightweight to the point of not only re-naming Aziraphale, but also not making any sense.

“I’m too sober for this,” she said, lifting her head so she could see over Aziraphale’s head if she could catch the eye of a server or the bartender. She could barely see the woman tending the bar behind the throng of people crowding it.

“Crowley—” 

There was something in her tone that made Crowley groan a bit as she glanced down at her, prepared to plead, if it came to that. “We’re allowed one beer. It’s not like we’ll get another chance like this. If we’re caught, we’re caught. Until then, we’re free.”

“What I was trying to say is that I much prefer wine over beer.”

Crowley grinned, feeling untethered, cheeky, but most of all like she could close her fist and crush the entire world in her palm. 

“A girl after my heart,” she said, again lifting her head to see if the bar cleared. It didn’t. “So what will it be?” She stood up, deciding to go and fetch their drinks. “Brown ale?” 

“Oh, I don’t know—”

“I have a feeling you’ll like it, angel. And if you don’t then we’ll know not to ask for that next time.” She winked. “I’ll get a Porter. It’s been a while since I last had one.”

Aziraphale sighed, and it sounded exasperated, but when Crowley looked at her, she had a secret smile on her lips that made the corner of her eyes crinkle. She nodded, so Crowley made her way towards the crowd of people. 

It was when Crowley was prepared to sit down on her chair, beer in each hand, that she realized she forgot to ask the bartender to open them. Usually it was something that happened automatically, but the bar had been full since they stepped in and the poor girl was swamped with orders when Crowley had come by.

“Oh, shit. I forgot to open them. I’ll be—”

But Aziraphale plucked one beer from her hand, took the fork from the cup holding a mix of cutlery and with a swift flick of her hand, the bottle made that fizzy, satisfying  _ shup _ sound. Crowley couldn’t move a muscle. Without even looking at her, to sus out the internal (completely unfounded and out of the blue) panic she was having, Aziraphale took the other bottle and did the same.

“There you go, my dear.” She placed the second bottle in front of Crowley on the table, with a smile that felt more like a nail in Crowley’s coffin.

That was what had her collapse on the chair as if her strings were cut. Anathema sniggered into Newt’s shoulder, but she couldn’t rub two brain cells together to wonder if she was laughing at her or something Newt was murmuring into her hair.

Nobody questioned her sudden silence, and Crowley took the bottle and attached her mouth to it for a long while just to have something to focus on that wasn’t the warm presence to her right.

They were halfway through their bottles when a decades old song came on and they both looked at each other like the same ghost waved at them.

“It’s been literal years since I last heard this song!” Aziraphale said, the giddiness climbing notches. “It’s— wait, I know what it’s called, it’s  _ Murky Waters. _ ”

_ “Muddy Waters,  _ angel. LP.”

“Yes, that’s it!”

Crowley stood up, the buzz of the drink washing away the uncertainties, grinning like she wouldn’t get a chance like this as she offered her hand over their beers. Aziraphale looked at it, lips ajar, before meeting Crowley’s eyes and smiling. Crowley lead them to the little stage-slash-empty-space to the side of the tables.

Crowley was only a few inches taller, but she found that she preferred to have her hands around Aziraphale’s waist, slouching a bit so Aziraphale’s arms could loop around her neck.

They were both grinning at each other like two fools, high on cheap beer and stolen moments. That was what they were doing: stealing precious moments from the world, from their mission, to spend them in a seedy bar. The same one Aziraphale recruited her in.

She felt so full in that moment, so full of everything: hope, dreams, happiness, love. If all went apeshit crazy after this little unsanctioned escapade, then she’d have this to return to. It comforted her to know that no matter what happened to then, she’d always have this. 

Then they both started singing the first line together, which neither expected, so they giggled, trying to keep up with the words, but failing. Because of this, their heads and their bodies were touching, pressing softly against each other. 

Yes, this moment would forever be treasured.

The song wasn’t as happy as Crowley felt; she listened to it a lot when she was going through some sad and nasty stuff during her childhood and teen years. But how could she remember those times when her palms were pressing against warm hips and the little smile Aziraphale kept on her lips made her thoughts fuzzy around the edges?

She ducked her head, pressing her cheek against Aziraphale’s as she twirled them slowly.

_ “I will ask you for mercy.”  _ Crowley murmured into Aziraphale’s ear, not quite hitting the notes, but not trying either. “ _ I will come to you blind. What you’ll see is the worst me. I’m not the last of my kind.” _

She pulled her head back to gauge her angel’s expression, seeing only softness and understanding in those eyes. They both sang the bis together, not taking their eyes off each other as they continued to sway, warm arms and hands keeping each other close and safe.

_ “Don’t fail me now,” _ Aziraphale mouthed, meeting Crowley’s dark gaze.  _ “Put your arms around me and pull me out. I know I’m found. With your arms around me, oh save me now.” _

Crowley was going to cry. How could someone hold so much compassion and understanding in their eyes? In the corner of their mouth? 

She hid her face in the crook of Aziraphale’s neck, breathing in the creamy smell of her hair. Aziraphale pulled their bodies closer still, tightening her hold. If the world was going to fall apart and cease to exist later that night or tomorrow, Crowley found solace in the existence of this moment. At least she would die knowing that someone  _ saw  _ her and accepted her entirely.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tried my hand at a bit of a song chapter. This was a scene that got written when this fic wasn't even half-written and had half a mind to put in an 'outtakes' chapter at the end of the fic, but then I added more words to it and managed to fit it in the story. LP's songs are so Sapphic for me.


	8. Kaiju

***

_ “Everything is ready, ladies,”  _ Mr Choi’s voice filtered into their helmets.

Crowley tried her hold on the disc, feeling its weightlessness while Aziraphale adjusted their parameters on the computer. She only got about three hours of shut eye before the alarms blared her into a forced conscious state. The storm of foul words she addressed it made even Aziraphale wince and make aborting motions with her hand, no doubt wanting to physically calm her.

“Let’s hope this time around we won’t be distracted,” Aziraphale said and Crowley grinned, a mix of recklessness and anticipation warring in her stomach.

_ Engagement Protocol ready. Initiating neural handshake. _

The same straw sucked her in and— 

—she is on a side-street by the river in New York orders and instinct warring, her team of hardened soldiers — Michael and Gabriel among them — shouting at her to hurry, there’s no time, the Kaiju is too close, and she looks at the glossy black Ford, once a means for transportation now a metal trap for a family of four, flanked by broken cars, the Kaiju is screeching, annoyed by the Air Force shooting at it and buildings are still being destroyed, people are screaming, fire and debris and smoke make her lungs spasms, and there’s a whole new perspective warring within her and why is her mind doing this to her right now she’s been in similar situations before and she always chose the orders and never looked back, and she doesn’t even know those people and—

— mom tells her to be strong that no one will ever pick her up if she falls, that she needs to be there for herself first and foremost, but mom doesn’t know that she already lives her life like that, like her because the only pillar strong enough to never break in her life has always been her mom, her saviour, her everything, and yes, she will be strong, she  _ is  _ strong, she will succeed and no one will ever be able to — 

— down, she’s down, and she can’t get up, they pinned her down, she needs help, oh god, no, not help, she can’t, she can’t, she  _ needs  _ to get out herself, get out, getoutgetoutgetout —  _ what are you, an idiot? Told ya to fucking leave! I swear pilots these days are dumber than a bell. Push so I can get this thing off you before they realize you’re trapped or they’ll have both our hides and I’m not sticking ‘round for that —  _ but they come, they do, and she sticks around, she does, she does, oh how resplendent and vicious she is, she is, she is fierce and wicked and grins like she has nothing else to lose, like their lives are not hanging on a thin thread like they’re not outnumbered and there’s blood she spits and the grin becomes lopsided, ferocious and she knows, she knows what she’ll do before she throws herself, scrawny self, at those brutes and no, no, she won’t let her down, no, she picked her up, she helped her, and now she was going to — 

— her ears whistle, the Kaiju screech breaking windows and the Air Force squad falls from the sky one by one like birds of prey targeting their lunch, but the only thing they encounter is the ground and a building, fire and smoke, and she can save the family, she can, they’re a few meters away, the Kaiju isn’t paying attention, and she makes a run for it, but then the leg comes down and the blood is so warm and sticky on her hands and face and neck and so, so, so red and someone’s pulling her back and— 

— Crowley’s stomach squeezed almost painfully as the cockpit dropped to reattach itself onto Zephyrus Anemoi’s shoulders.

_ Neural handshake successful. Both hemispheres calibrated. _

Crowley looked at Aziraphale, finding her gaze at once, the connection she’d felt the day before enveloping her senses and making her feel incredibly grounded. The memories of them, of her kids, tease at the edge of her thoughts, but Aziraphale’s presence in her mind keeps them away from overwhelming her. 

She knew now, the knowledge clear and alive. Gabriel and Michael had been on her team for a year at the time the Kaiju attacked. All three of them worked missions inland, but never to this magnitude. Gabriel had an ugly scar going from the top of his right shoulder all the way down to the small of his back, the price he paid for pulling Aziraphale (and the little girl) back before the Kaiju crushed her parents and twin sister.

The image shifted into the smiling face of the mechanic he met with Newt, Mark, and she knew they were the same person Aziraphale rescued.

There were no words passing through her lips or mind, but she felt Aziraphale’s affirmation flowing back. It was hard for her to even distinguish where she ended and Aziraphale began, but she wasn’t in a hurry to find out.

Having Aziraphale in her mind and her in Aziraphale’s was like inhabiting two places, two realities, two truths at once. It offered her perspective, but also strength and reassurance.

They might have never piloted a Jaeger, but Aziraphale’s military training was coursing through her veins, her muscles pulsing with memory that was not Crowley’s, just as Aziraphale’s mind and body pulsed with Crowley’s street fight and sleight of hand and spontaneity.

There was thrill, there was anticipation, and then there was safety.

_ “Okay,” _ Loccent said,  _ “Double Event. Category fours, codename Mutavore and Leatherback. Divine Retribution is en route already. Gears at the ready, ladies!” _

“It’s two in the morning, Mr Choi,” Crowley said, forgetting for a moment that she and the man had never spoken to each other until that moment.

“ _ Yes, it is, Ms Crowley. _ ”

“Are you even human? You’re way too chirper for this ungodly hour.”

Mr Choi chuckled. “ _ I’m not the one who stayed up late getting smashed. _ ”

A knot formed in her stomach. “How did you—”

Another chuckle.  _ “Gossip is THE currency here.” _

“Of course it is,” she muttered, Anathema’s words sailing lazily into her mind. “Do you even sleep?”

“Mr Choi does sleep,” Aziraphale chimed in as the helicopters were transporting them across the ocean. “Unless Mr Choi has skipped the minimum amount of hours he needs to take off every 24 hours,” she added pointedly, as if her squint could reach Mr Choi through the helmet, the Conn-Pod, and the miles separating them.

“ _ Everything’s in order, Ms Fell, _ ” Mr Choi said with amusement.  _ “Marshal wouldn’t let me near my station, if it wasn’t.” _

They were two teams, four people, three of which had military expertise, and they still struggled to keep the Kaijus from pushing them back, closer to the miracle mile.

Gabriel and Michael emptied two clips into the bulkier of the two monsters, the one that looked like a Jurassic Park attraction made of solid bone and rock parts, especially the crescent one that made up its head. It was the sort that would tear through any kind of edifice humans would build like a knife through wet paper, Crowley received confirmation from Aziraphale. The mini rockets burying into the Kaiju’s chest cavity finally took it out and Divine Retribution was moving towards them.

Because they needed help. Because they knew how to fight on ground, with humans, but at that scale, encased in steel and circuits and neither of them having any practical Jaeger training, they struggled to keep the finicky Kaiju they had on their hands.

That one preferred to stalk underwater and then attack out of nowhere and Crowley struggled with the controls, wanting —  _ needing  _ — to spring into action just as fast as they were attacked. She knew she could do it on ground, but the Jaeger was huge, yes, it could fight hurricanes and get out of it alive and in one piece, but it was slow. Slow for how Crowley needed it to move.

Calm and patience flowed to her and she acknowledged it, but it still didn’t help them, receiving more blows that they landed.

And then she saw it in her mind before Aziraphale’s arm shot out and caught the Kaiju by the throat.

_ Plasma cannon, Crowley!  _ Resounded both in her mind and out loud and Crowley charged it without knowing how she knew, just that the knowledge of it flowed through her mind like it was her own.

They managed one discharge before the Kaiju ripped itself from the grip with an anguished and angry screech, diving back in the ocean.

“Where is it? Where is it?” Crowley asked frantically.

Divine Retribution was still ways before it would reach them, but it was getting closer by the minute.

“I can’t see it, Crowley.”

In moments like those, she wanted to gnaw at her thumbnail and go out there to fight the monster, as illogical as it sounded. She still thought that outside of the drivesuit and the Jaeger, she’d be able to move faster and win the fight.

_ You’re not fully accepting the Jaeger,  _ Aziraphale sent.

_ It moves too slow for me! How can I win this fight if it won’t move when and how I tell it to?  _ Crowley shot back.

_ We, Crowley. We’re both in this. The combination of our minds permits us to move it as if it were our own body. _

_ But it’s slow! _

_ It’s not slow if you time your moves, if you’re patient and wait for the enemy to come to you. _

Crowley frowned, refusing to understand what Aziraphale was saying because her way of acting had served her well her entire life. Strike first and fast before the other has time to realize what happened, then hightail it from there. She knew her limits, she knew what she could do, how much damage she could inflict on opponents bigger than her. But this, the metal monster she was in was too big, too slow, too annoying to deal with.

_ Crowley. _

The gentleness in her voice made the panic rising in her stutter.

“Sorry,” she said into her helmet, eyes peeled on the visor, following the fosforescent blue blood of the Kaiju. It was still out there, stalking, adjusting to them, she knew that.

“I know this is the first time we both pilot a Jaeger and it feels a bit like inhabiting a new body.”

_ “Ladies, Leatherback is on the move,”  _ Mr Choi chimed in their helmets.

“And you see only the difference between your speed and its slowness, but we both can work towards bridging that gap. We just need to—”

The rest got swallowed up and transmitted in her mind ( _ find middle ground and use it to our advantage _ ) because Leatherback sprang up from their left, huge jaws clamping down hard on their left hand, the plasma cannon.

Crowley cried out, the pain of it travelling along her entire arm as if the monster bit into her flesh and bone. Then she growled, wanting to lift her left leg and kick her way through the fucker’s stomach, but Aziraphale cut down on that command before they unbalanced. The waves were not providing them any kind of stability and the Kaiju was working its way towards ripping that arm.

“Crowley—” 

“I know!” She grunted as she felt their other arm come down on the side of the Kaiju’s face, trying valiantly to make it let go of the other arm. “The propulsors!”

Aziraphale activated the propulsors in their elbow even before Crowley finished her command.

“ _ We’re close, Zephyrus, _ ” Michael’s voice filtered through. 

“ _ No rockets left, _ ” Gabriel added, voice sounding like he was grinning with a vengeance, “ _ so we’re coming down on it old school. _ ”

Old school meant that they jumped out and using their Jaeger’s clasped hands, landed the double fist on the Kaiju’s back, letting gravity and the tons of steel do the most damage to it.

It had the desired effect. It let their arm go and screeched itself back into the ocean.

Crowley thought that it was going to stalk them again, but instead it resurfaced just outside of their range and its back cracked open. For a moment, she thought that that was how the monster was going to die, but the fosforescent blue was not oozing out of it, it— was that electricity?

A pulse shot through them, and when they looked back, the whole city blended with the darkness of the sky. The problem, they realized, was that Divine Retribution went unresponsive.

“What’s happening?” Crowley asked. “What was that?”

The horror and something that might have been Aziraphale’s fear, but Crowley was sure that it was hers, dripped into her mind like poison.

“I think it was an electromagnetic emission.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means, my dear, that we’re the only ones standing between it and our city.”

Well, Crowley envisioned herself winning this impromptu battle at some point. She did not envision her and Aziraphale either becoming heroes or another pair who died trying to protect humanity.

“How are we even—?”

Aziraphale smiled, even though both their eyes were peeled on the visor because the Kaiju dived back into the ocean. “We’re analogue.”

Something happened then, something changed. The fear she felt at being the only ones standing between probable destruction and innocent lives dissipated like fog at the first rays of sun.

“How’s the arm?” Aziraphale asked, even though she knew. They both needed to hear each other’s voices in that moment.

Crowley moved hers, feeling the Jaeger respond. “Could pack one more plasma shot.”

“Good.”

Then the ocean broke apart and the Kaiju hit them with the whole weight of its body, making Zephyrus stagger backwards and almost losing his balance.

They fought in close quarters, unable to put enough distance between them so that Crowley could charge the plasma cannon. And then the Kaiju managed to rip out their arm and Crowley was sure she would’ve passed out from the painful feedback if it weren’t for Aziraphale, pushing her brain to release endorphins and adrenaline faster to numb the pain.

They couldn’t fight with only one arm, although they weren’t given a choice. Still, that monster was not going to get past them. Not as long as Crowley was still breathing.

_ That makes two of us,  _ Aziraphale added with a smile in her voice.

Then a voice Crowley thought she’d never hear again filled their helmets.

“ _ Trouble in paradise? _ ” Zuigiber said, and Crowley got a flash of that annoying smirk.

Relief flooded both their systems and they managed, through grunts and a cry out, to push the Kaiju back.

Apocalypse Four got in-between them and filled the Kaiju with enough mini rockets to put shooting video games to shame. Even when the water filled with fosforescent blue where the Kaiju had been, Apocalypse didn’t stop shooting until it ran out of rockets.

“Thank you for the save, Apocalypse,” Aziraphale said with a smile.

_ “You thought you’d become post-mortem heroes, didn’t you?”  _ Zuigiber’s smirk came through and made Crowley’s eye twitch.

“Not quite,” came Aziraphale’s wry reply.

_ Is she piloting the Jaeger alone?  _ Crowley send, throwing Aziraphale a befuddled look.

Aziraphale huffed. “That is impossible, my dear. Sir Terry is the other half of the pair.”

“Sir Terry?”

_ “The Kaiju is down,”  _ came a voice that Crowley had never heard before, but which reflected both the Sir and the Terry part of the name quite fully.  _ “Could you confirm that, Mr Choi?” _

_ “Leatherback is dead, we confirm, Sir Terry.” _

Relief melted her bones or it felt like that. Aziraphale beamed at her as they waited for the helicopters to come pick them up. The pain in her arm faded away, though it still tingled with the annoying pinpricks.

Doctor Tracy cleared her out with a promise that she’d tell the doctor if anything changed, and told her to take it easy for a few days.

What neither of them expected once they were back in their room, was for Aziraphale to be restless. She simply couldn’t sit still for even a handful of seconds and Crowley was too tired mentally and physically to be able to muster any sort of calm. Too bad she couldn’t transmit her sleepiness; that might have helped.

Neither knew what to do about it, so in the end Aziraphale chose to go find Carmine and try working out some of that energy while Crowley went for a long shower and then crashed into her mattress, falling asleep to the low thrum of stinging pain emanating from her left arm. 


	9. Close (Present)

***

Anathema analyzed Aziraphale’s last brain scans: before and after the neural handshake, and after the drift leakage stopped. 

She was standing in front of the big screen in the center of the lab that functioned like a tv screen and connected to the computers. It helped her having the scans enlarged and placed side by side because it allowed her to have a more bird’s eye view of them, even though she wasn’t any closer to figuring out what she wasn’t seeing. 

They all looked like any other scans she’d seen before from Gabriel and Michael and Carmine and Sir Terry. She even had Cherno Alpha’s pilots’ scans done in the same sequence. Each batch of scans showed differences — of course, no two brains were the same, not even twin ones; it was all about the experiences and their individual processing that made the neural pathways differ — which didn’t raise any alarm in her. 

And it frustrated her.

Why was Aziraphale behaving like that? What had happened during that last mission? These were questions that kept Anathema running in circles and made her downtime tense. She needed answers and she wanted them now. But she knew these things took time and patience.

She even contacted a neurologist, one of the few colleagues in her field she trusted the opinion of, hoping he could take a look at the CTs and MRIs and point something out to Anathema, but she hadn’t been able to get through to him no matter how many times she tried, so that was a dead end. The next option she was considering was an expert in Behavioural Neuroscience, but she hesitated with this one. Behavioural neuroscientists usually did studies on animals, so inviting this expert meant that she’d have to allow them to poke and prod Aziraphale’s brain otherwise they wouldn’t be much of a help. 

She knew what damage those methods could do to the brain and she had no intention of subjecting her friend to that. Crowley would surely hunt them both down and kill them on sight if they messed with her angel like that, and it wouldn’t be a matter of  _ if  _ but  _ when _ she’d discover. 

Two knocks jarred her from working knots into her hair. Crowley appeared in the space between the door and the jamb.

“Anything?” she asked, coming in and closing the door.

“Yeah, no.” Crowley looked at her. “I mean, I want to say that I’m close, but I feel like I’m missing something here and can’t figure out what.”

“Maybe you need to take a break,” Crowley suggested, placing a cold-fingered hand on her shoulder.

“I’ll take a break when I find out what’s wrong with Aziraphale. That’s why we came here.”

“Yes, but you’re tired — when was the last time you slept a string of hours uninterrupted? — and you know as well as I do that tiredness has never been conducive to results.”

Anathema stared at her. “Since when did you become the voice of reason? And I’ll let you know that 80% of my uni years were spent in a perpetual state of sleep-deprivation and still I finished with honours.”

Crowley grinned. “Yes, got it. You’re that awesome. Tell me something new.” Anathema snorted and Crowley chuckled. “And I’ll let  _ you  _ know that I’ve always been the voice of reason.”

“Yeah, sure.”

“More so since my friend forgot to take care of herself. Come on, I’ll tuck you in.” She was pulling on Anathema’s arm.

“You’ll tuck me in, huh?” She couldn’t help but smirk as she let Crowley guide her towards the door.

“Yes, and no funny business, young lady. I know you have a mischievous streak a mile high. You might be able to fool Newt, but not me.”

Anathema grinned, but just as Crowley was guiding her out of the door, her hands shot out and clutched at the door frame. 

“Wait! Almost forgot. Marshal’s on the line. Or rather is waiting for you to call her.”

“Me? Why?”

“Dunno,” she said pointedly. “Maybe it’s because you’ve been avoiding her the past few weeks?”

“But you’ve been updating her with everything that’s been happening here. I have nothing to talk to her about.”

Anathema hummed, her eyes blinking slowly now that she knew a bed was within the realm of possibilities. “Yeah, but she insisted she talked to you. You should take it. She might have some news about Aziraphale.”

“News that she didn’t tell you? I doubt.”

But even tired, Anathema detected the weakening of her resolve. She half-turned and pushed at Crowley’s shoulder.

“Go. Talk to her. Even if it’s for two minutes. You have nothing to lose. Besides, it’s bad rep to avoid your mother-in-law.”

“But you—”

“I’ll be fine. I know the way back and I’m not as tired that I’ll walk into a wall.” Even as she said this, her left hand kept pawing the air, searching for the wall to lean against. 

Crowley stared at it, eyebrow lifted, so Anathema took back control of her arm and fluttered it. “Oh, cram it. I’m just pulling your leg. I can take care of myself.”

“Sure.”

“Go, you doofus.” But Crowley’s hand was still holding Anathema’s other arm. “Seriously, I’ll be fine.”

“Oh, Sasha!” Crowley called out and Anathema turned her head to see one of the Cherno Alpha’s pilots, Sasha Kaidonovsky, stride down the corridor towards them.

Well, not really towards them. Anathema’s temporary office and lab was on her way towards wherever a pilot of her caliber was heading to.

She nodded once at Crowley and stopped a few steps away.

“Could you make sure our esteemed neuroscientist here gets to our room in one piece? She’s been pulling all-nighters and is barely able—”

“Oh, shut up, Crowley! I can—” Just her luck to almost lose her balance as she wrenched her arm from Crowley’s grasp and fell into Sasha’s arms.

Crowley was hovering almost above her, just as surprised by the turn of events as Anathema.

“Yes,” Crowley smiled wryly, “you  _ can  _ fall down and break your neck or a limb.”

“I understand,” Sasha said, determination making her features look like they were carved in stone, but then she looked down at Anathema and offered her a little smile. “I take you to room. No worry.”

“Well,” Crowley’s grin was too self-satisfactory and annoying, “will you look at that? Your own knight-ess in dark Henley.”

“That’s not even a word!” Anathema called because she couldn’t let Crowley look so smug, even as Sasha was gently guiding her away with a hand between her shoulder blades.

“It is! You’re just tired!”

That actually made Anathema frown and try to remember if she ever came across such a word as ‘knight-ess’, but she kept coming up blank and she was too far away when she decided to dispute that claim. 

Sasha was a gentlema—woman during the whole trip to her room and Anathema thought she thanked her at the end, but based on the little amused smile she might have garbled every word. Still, gallantly, Sasha nodded and left her.

And Anathema did try to sleep. She did! She put herself to bed, got into her favourite position (which was one leg pulled up and a pillow (Crowley’s) underneath it. “That’s what you get for interrupting my work,” she grumbled into her own pillow) and made efforts to clear her mind and allow sleep to come in.

But ideas and theories and past events were clamoring for her attention. She knew that sleep was the best way to help her brain clear neural pathways and allow it to make the necessary connections to allow her to find solutions and store away the information she gathered since her last sleep cycle. It was all textbook theory. But it was so hard.

She couldn’t help but feel that she was close to understanding what was wrong with Aziraphale, but for the life of her she couldn’t figure out where to look. And she should also call Newt because she’d promised him that she’d call when she got a moment's rest, but she should sleep now that she was in her bed, and the scans still looked perfectly normal and nothing jumped out at her, and she thought that Crowley might benefit from talking with Marshal. 

She knew it was Crowley’s way of putting some distance between home and herself. It was a way of protecting herself, Anathema knew because she also did that. She missed Newt something fierce. She missed the comfort of pressing herself against him and feeling his arms envelop her, keeping her safe. She missed his little kisses that sometimes tickled her, she missed his daily updates about the Jaegers and the various funny little things that happened during. She missed that routine like one missed a lost limb.

Crowley’s pillow was a poor substitute for emotional and physical comfort, though it did do the latter well.

Maybe she should call Newt, after all. But she also needed to sleep. Okay, she could do both, but not at the same time as her body suggested. She just needed to allow the adrenaline to be processed by her system and try to not think about too complex things.

It took her a long time to fall asleep. The only thing she remembered when she woke up was that she lost consciousness after the memory of Aziraphale confessing to her that Crowley was her better half, a few weeks before they actually got together. 

She met Crowley the next morning on her way to the lab, a mug of coffee in one hand and a croissant in the other.

“You look refreshed,” Crowley said.

Anathema had her mouth full, but she still answered that.

“I don’t speak bagel, you know.”

She swallowed, took a sip of her coffee, enjoying the mix of sweet and bitter.

“It’s a croissant. And I said: I even got REM sleep, so it helped. Dreamt that you took away my red hat and were playing catch with it, throwing it between you and Aziraphale who was also your Jaeger and I kept trying to talk sense into you two and tell you that that hat was Aziraphale’s brain scans and I needed them ASAP but neither listened to me.”

Crowley stared at her. “Wow. That’s— a dream, all right.”

Anathema snorted. “It’s the brain cleaning the past days’ detritus and helping create new neural pathways.”

“Uh-huh, and I had an omelette for breakfast.”

Anathema hit her biceps with the back of her croissant-free hand. “How did the conversation with Marshal go?”

That was when Crowley’s amused expression soured. “Nothing much. She wants us back by the end of the week.”

She didn’t like that. “I told her we haven’t found anything substantial that we could use back home. We can’t leave until we have at least  _ something.” _

Crowley shrugged as they entered the lab. She liked to think it was hers, but there were other scientists coming and going and the only reason she thought of it as hers was because she was the only one there at almost all times of day or night.

“Told her something similar,” Crowley said. “She didn’t want to listen to reason. She also said, quote unquote, ‘it’s an order’.”

Anathema placed her half-empty mug on the only table that was used for coffee and snacks and was pushed against the wall nearest to the door and farthest from any computer. There was a platter half-full with different salty and sweet pastries. They knew that scientists had a bad habit of forgetting to feed themselves, so they provided food that didn’t necessitate them leaving their workspace. She didn’t know what the other scientists were doing that required them to be out of the lab more often than not.

“Of course it’s an order,” Anathema grumbled. “Whenever someone doesn’t listen to her unreasonable requests it’s always an order. Pulling rank and all that—”

“Want me to call her back and tell her your thoughts?”

“No.” She was sorting through the fMRI and EPI scans on her computer, drawing up on the big screen the scans she wanted to compare and contrast. “I’ll call her at some point.”

“Okay. Need any help?”

Anathema focused on Crowley. She was bent over the desk, looking at the scans (and surely not understanding anything) with an interest that made Anathema remember why she dragged Crowley with her. She looked thinner than she remembered, though.

“Are you eating three meals a day?” she asked and demanded in the same tone of voice, brow furrowing.

“You mean like you’re eating three meals a day? Not really.”

She took a while to get over the surprise of getting an honest answer from Crowley when she got used to parsing through her replies to find the truth hidden beneath.

“This is not about me.” 

Crowley met her gaze. “This is as much about you as it is about me. We’re both invested in finding out what’s wrong with my angel.”

“But between you and me, you should at least take care of yourself.” Even as she was saying that, she realized she was digging her own grave.

The wry smile on Crowley’s face confirmed it. “Really? We’re having that conversation now? We’re both crap at taking care of ourselves, let’s be honest. But we’re lucky we have our own angels back home who remind us of that. The problem is that something happened to my angel and I cannot be arsed to take care of myself when I’m not even sure she’s ever going to get better.”

There was tiredness in the spaces between her words, tiredness and a dimming hope. Crowley was making efforts to keep herself afloat. Anathema pressed her lips together and kicked herself for being so callous.

“She will get better.”

The wry smile took an edge to it that was not entirely good. “Are you saying that as a professional or as my friend?”

“Both.”

She huffed and turned to scan the papers on the table. “Tell me what I need to do. Two pairs of eyes are better than one.”

And Anathema didn’t have the heart to send her away. Crowley needed to do this as much as Anathema, and even if she didn’t have Anathema’s knowledge and trained eye, she was right. And besides, maybe an untrained eye was exactly what she needed. A fresh perspective. Her pointing out stuff that she found suspicious. 

There was still hope and Anathema would do anything in her power to make it become a reality.

***

“We’re out of coffee.”

“We know that Aziraphale has had episodes of sensory deficit prior to her coma,” Anathema said, her ergonomic chair moving left and right as she was studying the after neural handshake scan, recalling the ones she took when Aziraphale came in with sensory problems at different intervals of time. “Theoretically, it started with areas 1, 2, and 3,” she traced them with her finger on the scan, “the primary somatosensory cortex. Then area 17, the primary visual cortex. And finally, areas 41 and 42, the primary auditory cortex.”

“English please. I’m too tired to parse through that.”

She blinked owlishly at Crowley. “Before Aziraphale fell into a coma, she had trouble with her five senses. It would have started with the sense of touch and then—”

“Uh, not really. If we’re using our last mission as the starting point of her change, then it definitely started with a loss of appetite. She only drank tea that day.”

She frowned at the scan, knowing that the neuroscience community still couldn’t agree on what (and  _ if _ a single) area was responsible for hunger, that there were a lot of factors, both cerebral and within the intestine, that ‘lit’ up with hunger response.

“So loss of appetite, taste, touch, sight, hearing, and smell.” She frowned at the scan. “They’ve all been temporary and by the time Aziraphale came to me, they reverted back to normal parameters.”

“Sounds like a kid pushing buttons to see what happens,” Crowley commented as she took the last pastry and bit into it.

There was something there that rubbed Anathema the wrong way, something she wasn’t seeing. She continued to retrace her steps, pulling the chair back to the desk to click through Aziraphale’s scans.

“She had those short moments of sensory loss, but there have been other things that temporarily made Aziraphale not be herself.”

“The jumps in body heat,” Crowley enumerated, mouth full, “heart palpitations, shortness of breath, sudden tiredness, loss of focus, temporary memory and language loss, and the snapping.”

“That,” Anathema points out, even as her attention was still on the screen, trying to find Aziraphale’s scans after the coma. “That last one. That’s a change in behaviour. It has nothing to do with her physiology.”

“But she usually gets mildly hangry if she doesn’t eat when she needs to, so it could’ve been her snapping at me be—”

“No. She’d never snap at people, even if she was famished. Especially if it’s you.”

“Then?”

“It has something to do with the chemicals in her brain, I’m sure. Something changed during your last mission. Something caused abnormal physical responses. It’s— it’s like,” she was so close to finding those scans, “her mind couldn’t figure out what to do with the knowledge it possessed. Couldn’t understand how those senses correlated to the outer stimuli, how they fit with what the reality was asking of her.”

“What does that even mean?”

“I don’t know yet what that means exactly — found it! — but I know for sure that this can also be a defence mechanism.”

“Against what?”

She looked at Crowley, feeling full of energy again, her mind’s cogs turning furiously and making new connections that she couldn’t understand just yet.

“When I find that out, I’ll know how to treat Aziraphale.”

Crowley nodded, determination making space on her face. “What are those?”

“These are Aziraphale’s scans from your first, second and third drift,” she sent them to the big screen, as well as the next ones, “and these are both of your brain scans when you drifted after she woke up from her coma.” 

“How are they relevant?”

“You remember how your first and subsequent drift scans have shown a compatibility that was off the charts?” Off Crowley’s lifted eyebrow, Anathema smiled wryly, “of course you do. Stupid question. But necessary. The after-coma scans show zero drift compatibility. Which is crazy. Your compatibility percentage has stayed high from the first drift. You’ve never experienced any significant drop, except that one time you chased the R.A.B.I.T.”

Crowley looked from one scan to the other, and then at Anathema who was at her side, waiting patiently for her to connect the dots. “Okay?”

“The fact that your entire drift history points towards a strong and long-lasting connection and then the after-coma scans show zero compatibility — not even a decline, but flat zero — is like a neon sign trying to blind us!”

Crowley blinked at her. “I’m not following.” 

“Aziraphale is blocking or repressing something.”

“The memory of what happened to her?” There was hope in her voice.

“Might be. Or might be something else. I can’t be sure. The scans go so far. I’d need to be in her mind to—”

They both looked at each other at the same time. 

“You said,” Anathema starts slowly, as if she was testing the idea and her words at the same time, “that you were met with a blank wall when you drifted.”

“Yes.”

“Your memories coursed, but couldn’t find Aziraphale’s in the drift.”

“Yes.”

“And that when you called for her, nothing answered back and then Aziraphale took both of you out of the drift.”

“Yes.” Anathema waited. “I can drift with her again.”

“It might not offer different results.”

“But I can try harder, push harder against the wall.”

“You could damage your own mind doing that, Crowley. This is too dangerous. You recall what she did to Michael.”

Crowley frowned. “Yeah, but she didn’t do that to me.”

“What are you trying to say?”

“I talked to Michael. She said that the only thing she remembered from the drift was a sense of cold metal and jagged edges that were tearing at her. That’s completely different from what I felt and saw. The blank wall felt smooth and warm and— impenetrable. She was passive with me whereas she was actively hostile towards Michael. But I also didn’t try hard to breach it.”

“You’re saying that you could do that now.”

“I can try. I’m familiar with the drift now, and with Aziraphale. If she’s blocking me, then that means that I need to persist.”

“But she might do that for a reason.”

“That is, if she’s really blocking us or that’s a result of something else. Either way, I— we need to find out.”

“It’s still dangerous, Crowley.”

She crossed her arms, features illuminated in the cold light from the screen, and gave Anathema the kind of smile that people with no self-preservation usually did. 

“More dangerous than going up against a Kaiju?”

“Definitely,” Anathema said resolutely. “We don’t know what’s on the other side of the wall.”

“And we won’t find out just by looking at the brain scans. Come on, Anathema, it’s our only viable option right now.”

“You’re defenceless in a drift. You’re opening yourself up to danger without any way of countering but your own mind. I need to know that I can pull you back. I won’t endanger you pointlessly.”

“You won’t. I want to do this.”

“Crowley—”

“Anathema,” she said, an edge to her voice, “she’s still in there somewhere. If this is the only way we can save her, then I’m taking my chances.” She straightened up and turned fully towards her. “I won’t let anything go unchecked for fear of damage.”

She wanted to argue because what she was proposing was crazy and presented a number of risks. But she also recognized the glint in her eyes, the impatience, the determination. She wanted to save Aziraphale no matter what it took, no matter if that meant she might harm herself from within.

As much as Anathema wanted to protect Crowley from her alarming lack of self-preservation, she also knew that it was either that or have the behavioural neuroscientist come and prod her with needles and electroshocks and— no. She agreed with Crowley. They shouldn’t leave anything go unchecked before Anathema proposed that invasive method. 


	10. He arm (Past)

**Sydney Shatterdome, 1800 hours**

Eighteen and a half months ago

***

After five and a half months of Jaeger piloting and nearly half a dozen kills under their belt, Crowley and Aziraphale worked a strategy that combined her freestyle fighting technique with Aziraphale’s military training. It was like a dance they were doing. Depending on the situation, usually Aziraphale took control of the fight, and then Crowley followed close behind, ready to bring forth her knowledge and switch from a more coordinated attack to a messy fight that saw Zephyrus losing pieces every time.

Marshal was not pleased. Actually, that was an understatement. She threatened to get Zuigiber down there to drill into her the kind of fighting style that would minimize the recklessness, but they both knew that Zuigiber was busy in Hong Kong.

That meant that Marshal was putting pressure on Aziraphale to teach Crowley her style. But when one had lived on the streets for as long as Crowley had, some habits were hard to give up or polish. And Aziraphale knew that, which was also one of her arguing points against Marshal.

“Crowley, dear, you know you have tells when you attack,” Aziraphale said with the kind of lilting in her voice that made Crowley forget why she was annoyed with her partner.

“Maybe you shouldn’t pay so much attention to me, then,” she muttered petulantly.

Aziraphale extended a hand to help her up and Crowley studied it for a moment. It looked soft and cushy, but she’d had the last four sparring sessions as proof that it could become a lethal weapon in 0.1 seconds flat. She accepted the hand and Aziraphale hoisted her up. It felt warm and strong and Crowley reluctantly let it go.

Aziraphale gently checked her shoulder, jarring Crowley out of her thoughts. “I know what you’re thinking, dear girl.”

Heat spread in her chest at the pet name. Yes, she knew how Crowley thought now. With five successful neural handshakes under both their belts, it was no wonder that Aziraphale could read Crowley so easily, she felt naked even though she was dressed adequately for their sparring session. And with their last neural handshake only three days ago, Crowley was disadvantaged. Aziraphale had a better grasp on her emotions and intentions.

“Not thinking,” Crowley said because her mouth usually had a wonky filter.

“That’s why your eyebrows are furrowed.”

“Another match.”

Aziraphale gave her a long look. “We’ve already sparred five times today. We’re both drenched and sticky.” Was she deliberately using certain words to throw Crowley off? Because if so, she was damn well succeeding. 

“Last one. Promise.”

She was already moving over to her side of the mat and got in position, arms held up, no stick in either hand, feet apart, eyes concentrating on Aziraphale’s shoulder rather than her eyes. They were too distracting.

Which was probably why Aziraphale kept besting her. It was much easier for Crowley to stare right back at a Kaiju than meet Aziraphale’s gaze when she meant business.

“Very well.”

Yes, Marshal was annoyed with them for putting a strain on the Jaeger budget, but when she was out there, fighting a huge monster that could tear them to pieces if they weren’t careful, such practicalities were suddenly none of her concern. It was only them and the monster trying to take over their world and they would die first before they let that happen.

Besides, she loved the thrill and giddy anticipation Aziraphale got when Crowley asked (without asking) to take the proverbial wheel. She always knew Crowley had an idea that might not be the best, but it always got the job done in the end. If not, then Aziraphale was always ready to swoop in and save the day.

She hid the smile into her damp towel as she got out of the bathroom, steam following her. Aziraphale was off to get their dinner and secure the table farthest from the war clock, and she was to follow. She did remind Crowley to blow dry her hair before she left, but her mohawk was just damp, so she toweled it again before combing it a bit, and called it a day. She put on a pair of baggy trousers and a sleeveless black shirt with a high collar, foregoing a bra. Recklessly, she wondered if Aziraphale would notice. 

Why the sudden need to be noticed, and not by everybody but by one person in particular, she couldn’t figure out. They were best friends who knew each other inside-out, still a novel thing for Crowley, considering that she spent her whole life doing the exact opposite because being noticed meant trouble. And she could never afford that kind of trouble.

Not that now she could. There were literally bigger fish that required their attention and Marshal was working with her team (which included all the Jaeger pilots) to come up with a plan to stop the Kaijus from entering their world.

Still, bra or no bra, her breasts were small and firm enough to not really notice the difference unless one paid particular attention.

She shook her head as she headed out because this joke was probably too much. Not to mention that Aziraphale would get a whiff of it the moment she was near Crowley. The drift leakage provided them with fading emotional output from the other when they were close to each other because it had been three days since their last neural handshake. Curiously, Crowley kept thinking that the residual drift window was increasing with each neural handshake.

Anathema disproved that notion, but she only did that because there had never been recordings of such a thing happening. Even the veteran pair of twelve years had only about two days of drift leakage.

Crowley was still not convinced that it wasn’t happening to them, but Anathema dealt only in concrete proof, and Crowley was waiting for their next drift to time the days and then get her to test them and see for herself. 

Stepping into the mess hall felt like she was stepping into a busy market, the clamoring of voices and tableware being shoved on the table was— almost comforting. That meant that there was life there, there was hope and dreams and wills to live. She took a moment to take all of that in as if she was a vampire who fed on other people’s life energy.

And then someone checked her shoulder in the brutal way only a gang member did when they weren’t allowed to pummel the poor fucker to death.

“Uh, excuse  _ you?”  _ she said, rubbing the sore spot.

And the moment the woman turned around, Crowley knew that she should’ve let the sleeping lion sleep. But there must be something in the air or the fact that she got used to life in the Shatterdome because she suddenly felt entitled to point out when others were jerks on purpose with her. Months ago she’d have let this slide. 

Probably.

No. She’d have checked the arsehole right back and got really close, really in the fucker’s face, her scrawny self exuding as much intimidation as she could to cover for the fact that the other person would have probably been able to pick her up one-armed and throw her across the room like a wilted branch.

Now, several pounds heavier and with more combat training under her belt, she was ready to let it go if the person apologized.

Huh. Aziraphale must’ve rubbed off on her if she was attempting conversation instead of grunts, growls and breach of personal space.

“Problem?” the woman near-growled. She was a full head taller than Crowley and decidedly thrice heavier than her, and she looked familiar. 

“Yeah? You did that on purpose,” she said, pointing at her sore shoulder.

“And?”

Now, she hadn’t exactly expected that kind of response. She was used to people either ignoring her or being nice to her in the Shatterdome. It wasn’t like she thought everyone liked her or would come to like her. Heck,  _ she  _ didn’t like half the people working there and she didn’t even know them.

Still, she bit down a scathing remark that would surely put the woman on the offensive in a flash.

“Is that the new way of making friends?”

Close enough.

The woman—  _ Erin,  _ as was written on her tag — tensed and leaned forward as if she was prepared to strike Crowley where she stood. She felt Aziraphale’s presence before she heard her name.

“Crowley!” Aziraphale called from Crowley’s right, but she didn’t turn to look at her even though she wanted to, instinctively. She recognized the woman in front of her, now. The same one who checked her with the tray the first time Crowley ate in the mess hall. “There you are, my dear, I was wondering where you might have—”

Erin sneered. “Right, go back to you master, mutt, where you belong.”

Crowley almost laughed in her face. There was definitely something wrong with her because even though she knew the woman insulted her, she could only feel validated and giddy with the knowledge that even someone who clearly hated her could see that she belonged by Aziraphale’s side. If that wasn’t confirmation that somewhere, somewhat she had made the best choice of her life, then she didn’t know what was. 

But the wave of slowly building anger sneaked up on the bubbly joy she was feeling and right when she turned her head at the only person she was even able to receive such input from, Aziraphale pushed her cup of tea at Crowley as she stepped forward, and Crowley took it without blinking.

“I got this, my dear,” Aziraphale said, calm and calculated in a way Crowley only heard when she was on the brink of doing something rash and unreasonable.

Like that time she doused their sword in diesel and let it catch fire before plunging it deep in the Kaiju’s belly. They had to jump in the ocean to stop the flames from melting the arm off.

“I request that you apologize to Antonia.”

Crowley almost winced at hearing her given name. 

“She doesn’t deserve to be here,” Erin spat out. “What makes you think I’ll ever apologize to a mutt?”

Crowley couldn’t see Aziraphale’s face as her body was half in front of her, so she placed her hand on Aziraphale’s shoulder to pull her attention back.

“Leave it, angel,” she said softly. “It’s not worth it.”

“The people accepted into the programme are all incredibly talented and well-prepared to give up their lives in battle so that the entire world does not fall prey to those monsters out there. Antonia is one of the most exceptional pilots I have ever had the honour of fighting alongside. Now please apologise for your uncouth behaviour.”

Instead of hearing reason, the engineer (because she was an engineer now that she placed the colour and design of her overalls) scrunched up her nose in anger.

“Don’t patronize me just because you’re Marshal’s daughter. I know how the programme works. I just didn’t think you’d stoop so low as to pick up strays with no military background whatsoever.”

“This was an exception,” Aziraphale retorted with all the confidence of a marshal giving orders.

“Yeah, sure. Only when it suits you.”

She knew the response Aziraphale would give before she said it, and with it a new perspective on Erin fell into place in Crowley’s mind.

“There are cases when people are simply not compatible with the pilots who need partners. I was one of those, until recently. It happens, and we cannot do anything about it. They are still offered a place within the Shatterdome if their skills are useful in any way, so they are not sent home without an offer of employment.”

Erin’s face contorted into a mosaic of ire at that. “Me and my team keep those Jaegers running and ready for battle,” she spat. “Not you. Or this scarecrow here.”

The muscle under Crowley’s hand tensed and Crowley squeezed in warning almost instinctively. It wouldn’t do for her angel to start a brawl in the middle of the mess hall. They’d certainly be suspended from active duty until further notice; Marshal wouldn’t let this pass unpunished.

“Aziraphale,” Crowley said for good measure.

“That certainly won’t do,” she said over Crowley’s quiet warning as she started rolling up one shirt sleeve at a time, methodically and unhurriedly. “I requested politely for an apology to someone who has done you no harm, verbally or physically, and you have refused. More than that, you bring into question the competency of every pilot who has ever stepped into a Jaeger and with that you not only slander my co-pilot and the division we are both part of, but the entire programme which oversees the safety of billions of people.”

She finished rolling up both sleeves. The muscles under Crowley's hand were relaxed, just as Aziraphale’s entire body was. But Crowley knew. She had sparred with her so many times that she knew the calmness and focus that pervaded her angel’s body and features before she struck out of nowhere.

“This needs to be rectified.”

“Az—”

“I challenge you to a show of strength.” 

The people who had dropped any pretense of not listening in, stilled. A semi-hush fell around the tables flanking them and Crowley felt anticipation building in the pit of her stomach that was entirely her own. 

“We,” Aziraphale continued, a command to her tone that Crowley heard only in critical moments, “are going to settle this matter right here, right now.”

The engineer’s anger dissipated to make space for confusion and a bit of eagerness.

“Angel,” she uttered the pet name she used only when the situation was dire because it usually pulled Aziraphale’s attention, “please don’t start a fight,” Crowley said idly from behind her shoulder, although she knew she could do nothing less than support her angel should she decide to follow that path.

“Fight?” Aziraphale gave her a puzzled look, then she glanced up at her hair. “Crowley, you didn’t dry blow your hair.”

She smiled tightly. “That’s not the issue right now.”

“You know you could catch a cold walking aroun—”

_ “Angel,”  _ she stressed between clenched teeth. “It’s the middle of November! I wouldn’t get a cold even if I walked around naked and then dived into the ocean.”

“I hope you don’t intend to do that!”

Crowley felt like she had whiplash just by taking in those words. The indignation in Aziraphale’s voice certainly didn’t help.

“I— what? Why would I do that?” Crowley said heatedly because her angel was not making any sense.

“Because you always want to prove your point to me.”

Crowley blinked, trying to grasp at what got them to talk about her walking naked and catching a cold. “That’s  _ not the point  _ here!” she gritted out. “The fight. You don’t actually mean to fight her, right?” 

She stared at Crowley for a few moments before she realized what Crowley was saying. “Oh! No. No fight is going to take place here.” Some disappointed groans resounded around them. “The challenge I was talking about is arm wrestling.”

Crowley gawked and involuntarily did what the rest of their spectators did, too: they all measured Aziraphale’s bulk against Erin’s who was a full head and a half taller and enough pounds heavier than Aziraphale to make Crowley want to suggest something else for that challenge.

But she knew they couldn’t back away from that when the engineer grinned toothily. Huh, she was beautiful— when she didn’t scowl so much. The smile relaxed many dips and divots on her face and she even had a dimple in her left cheek. Probably that was why she didn’t smile often. Made her look too approachable and friendly.

“Okay by me,” Erin said. “If you win, I’ll apologise to your mongrel. If I win, she’ll be at my beck and call from now on, no matter the situation.”

_ “What?!”  _ Crowley blanched at the prospect of being someone’s servant. “Like  _ fuck  _ I’m gonna be your slave!” She took a step forward, prepared to start the fight she had been warning Aziraphale off not a minute ago.

The back of her angel’s forearm pressed into her stomach and stopped her advancing. She tried valiantly to focus on her righteous anger and not the strength her partner possessed in  _ one  _ arm.

“One day,” Aziraphale said, steel running in her voice.

“Aziraphale!”

“One month,” the engineer sneered.

“One day and if I win you’ll not only apologize, but you’ll refrain from talking badly about our division.”

She scoffed, but seemed to weigh her options. “One week, if I win. If you do, then I’ll stop badmouthing your division but won’t apologize.”

“If I win, you’ll apologize to Crowley and never insult anyone who works here. If you win, you get one week, but on top of that your access to Crowley will be limited to what free time she has after training and debriefs, and the time she spends with me.”

Which Crowley translated as: none at all. 

She fought hard to keep a grin at bay because even if her angel was bargaining her to a stranger, she still made sure that on the slight chance that she’d lose this bet, Crowley would still be able to get out of it.

“That’s bullshit!”

“Take it or leave it.” Her tone was firm and didn’t leave any room for wiggle. Erin was either going to accept those terms or — Crowley was sure — Aziraphale would stare her into submission.

The silence, this time, was longer as Erin seemed to give Aziraphale’s offer even more thought, weighing the pros and cons. Crowley wanted to drag her angel away and forget this stupid situation ever even occured.

“Aziraphale, please, this is going too far,” Crowley said urgently, touching Aziraphale’s arm.

“Do you doubt I can win this?” she asked with an intensity in her eyes that Crowley couldn’t read, even as close as she was to her. Confidence and stubbornness trickled into her mind from Aziraphale.

“No, I’ve stopped doubting you since the day we drifted. I just think this is a waste of your time. We could be eating now instead of challenging mountains to arm wrestling.”

“Someone speaking ill of you  _ and _ to your face is a waste of my time?” The surprise turned into stocked fire in the blink of an eye. “My dear, if there is one thing you need to understand about me is that  _ nobody  _ insults someone I care about and leaves scot-free.”

The determination in her eyes, her jaw, her stance stunned Crowley into forgetting how to shape thoughts into coherence. She knew Aziraphale had a loyal streak the size of a Jaeger, but she never thought that that kind of loyalty could be extended to her, too. It was a fact intimately known to her that she would protect Aziraphale with her life, if it came to that, but she didn’t think that Aziraphale might feel just as strongly about her.

And it was incredibly stupid. Not that they’d both go to great lengths to protect someone they cared about, but that it never occurred to Crowley that she could be someone worthy of such fierce protection.

“‘Kay,” Erin said. “You have a deal.”

“Perfect.” The lilt in her voice was reflected in the brightness of her eyes. “These people are our witnesses.” 

They both took their positions on opposing sides of the nearest free table.

“My dear,” Aziraphale said, turning a smile towards Crowley. “Would you do the honour of being our referee, since your freedom is at stake here?”

Her face stretched into a wide grin. Fine. They were going to go through with this. Her favourite part of their shared meals was going to have to wait now. She didn’t like that, as watching Aziraphale enjoy even a cup of tea was one of Crowley’s new favourite pastimes (apart from lightly teasing Newt, which seemed to be okay with Anathema, if the emphasis was on  _ lightly _ ), but she could make an exception. Just this once. 

“I hope you give her hell for interrupting our lunch.”

The beatific smile was exactly the kind of response Crowley had been looking for.

This was going to be good! 

People had gathered around when they realized that Aziraphale Fell was going to arm wrestle with the butchest female Jaeger Engineer in the Sidney Shatterdome. Crowley took a gulp of Aziraphale’s steaming tea and wrinkled her nose. Too sweet for her tastes. The two women placed their elbows on the table, palms close to each other but not touching.

Crowley pushed away the plates and mugs before she placed her arse on the table. She hovered the cup of tea over the twined hands as the women assessed each other.

“Okay, ladies, no foul play. On my go, you both give it all. The winner— ah, you both know what either one will get.”

“In both cases it’s you,” Anathema said from behind Crowley, making her jolt and look over her shoulder.

“What are you doing here?”

“Came to eat. Stayed for the show.” She grinned.

Crowley sighed exasperatedly and turned her attention back to Aziraphale and her opponent who were glaring daggers at each other.

“Let’s make this a one time thing, okay, ladies? No matter who wins, the other won’t seek revenge or behave like a sore loser. Understood?”

“Yes,” the engineer said.

“Understood,” replied Aziraphale.

“Ready?” Both grabbed the edge of the table with the free hand and leaned forward. “Go!”

The crowd began chanting different names and encouragements. Crowley took a gulp of sweet tea and watched with interest as the tie swayed on both sides for a while, creating that sweet, sweet tension. Both women’s biceps were bulging, muscles on their forearms tensing in and out under their skin depending on the side their tightly grasped hands swayed.

A light sheen of sweat coated their brows, and on more than one occasion, the engineer had to unclench her free hand from the table where a patch of condensation had formed. Before Crowley took another sip of tea (more out of something to do to dissipate the tension that the chanting cranked up and the sight of the hands swaying in Aziraphale’s disfavour), she saw Aziraphale’s nose wrinkle and she knew — even though she never saw her angel arm wrestle — that it was over. 

With a growl, Aziraphale made a last effort and pushed the engineer’s hand back, once and fast, and the crowd cheered.

Crowley grinned proudly at her angel.

Both women were flexing their respective hands and then stood up. The noise died down almost instantly as Aziraphale and Erin assessed each other.

Then the engineer turned her attention towards Crowley.

“I apologize for insulting you. Though I still don’t agree with you being in this programme, a deal is a deal.”

“Not much I can do about that. Can’t change my past, but I sure as hell can change my future. With or without your approval.”

“Cheers to that!” called Anathema and everyone took their drinks in their hands and clashed them.

Crowley held Aziraphale’s tea towards the engineer until she took her forgotten mug and clinked it against Crowley’s. She downed the tea in one go.

“Crowley! You drank all my tea!”

She grinned toothily at Aziraphale. “It was either that or joining the arm wrestling.”

Everybody laughed, but it was soon drowned out by the blare of the alarm.

A Kaiju attack.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you could tell how much I enjoyed writing this chapter. Not to mention that I'm still patting my back for managing to slip in the infamous 'hold my beer' action XD


	11. The first time

***

“Mr Choi,” Crowley said in her helmet, “so chirpy so late in the night? I’m starting to think you have a twin working here.”

Tendo laughed. It was a thing they did in jest where they used titles and surnames instead of given names. “ _ Years and years of experience, Ms Crowley.” _

“I’ll defer to my elders.”

_ “We know better.” _

They defeated the Kaiju in a bit over two hours, their longest solo fight so far. Divine Retribution was still in repairs. The attack happened while Aziraphale was elbow-deep in its left hip. Crowley could still see streaks of vaseline on her face and hair through the helmet. She itched to clean it.

Marshal tore them a new one, though. Crowley still couldn’t keep the fight as clean as the Kaiju permitted it and Aziraphale rarely intervened to stop or steer Crowley away from throwing caution to the wind. But even as Marshal was not-quite-shouting at them about budget cuts and whatnot, waves after waves of impatience stalwartly kept in check behind the outer facade of Aziraphale’s calm demeanor were hitting Crowley. It was to the point where she hadn’t been paying attention to what her superior was saying because her mind was too focused on Aziraphale.

They were let out with a stern ultimatum and Crowley thought she reassured Marshal that she’d strive to be more careful next time or maybe that was Aziraphale. Either way, they both thought those words and Crowley felt her mouth shape them. But she also felt Aziraphale’s.

There was a rush of something formless and all-encompassing assaulting them both as they made their way to their room, both feeling a familiar itch underneath their skin that was building momentum second by second. So Crowley did what she always did best in such situations: tried to calm her pilot down by contrasting the impatience in her with calm emotions, sometimes even images. 

It worked for a bit, at least enough for them to get off the elevator and get into their room. 

By this point, Aziraphale would take a quick shower and then run off to the Kwoon Room where she’d spar with Zuigiber, then come back bruised, but calm. She’d seen them fight only once. That experience would stay with Crowley until the day she died. But she knew for a fact that Zuigiber was not free at the moment, so that meant that Aziraphale would disappear to the gym.

A different kind of jitters settled under her own skin that didn’t belong to Aziraphale. Crowley was definitely not tired anymore, even though she could feel the dull ache of her overexerted muscles from moving their Jaeger around.

Just as predicted, Aziraphale started to take off the upper part of the drivesuit and Crowley had no idea where her next move came from or even if she thought it at all, but she grasped the newly bared skin of her left forearm. Aziraphale turned fully towards her, a question in her eyes that her mouth was preparing to voice, but another step brought Crowley so close that she only had to bend her head down slightly to press a warm kiss to her open mouth.

“Don’t go,” she croaked like a plea only a lover could utter when she pulled back a scant few inches. When she saw the stunned expression on her pilot’s face, the magnitude of her action fully settled in and she drew in a breath, before she expelled it in shock. “Oh god, I’m so sorry! I didn’t— that wasn’t— I’m sor—” 

Aziraphale slammed her into the wall quite suddenly, fingers digging into her biceps.

“My dear.” The calm in her voice was in direct contrast to the whirlpool of emotions that she was receiving through their link, barely kept in check. “I need to know: did you do that because you wanted to or was it a spur of the moment action?”

“Uh…”

“Please be honest with me,” she whispered, the first real tremor sneaking into her voice. 

For a handful of excruciating moments, Crowley was tongue-tied. There was no coherent thought in her head, only the input from the hot palms and the heavy, yet controlled breathing of Aziraphale and the intensity of her gaze, all of which didn’t help her in the slightest.

“I… I wanted to,” she confessed in a whisper. “I  _ needed  _ to. I couldn’t not. You’re—” Suddenly the chaotic input completely disappeared, leaving Crowley to feel like she just staggered, drawing in a shaky breath.

A soft exhale from Aziraphale and then— 

They’d touched numerous times, but never like this. Aziraphale had never used such strength on her, and her mouth had never felt like a hot brand upon her lips. They had never moaned in sync when their mouths moulded over each other because their mouths had never been in such close proximity before.

Crowley pulled her in, desperately taking everything Aziraphale was dishing out to her.

“Az— plea— oh g—  _ hhh.”  _

“Hush— let me—  _ hnng— Crowley.” _

She was pressed so fully against the wall that Crowley didn’t even register the cold metal fighting against the heat rolling off her incinerated back. Aziraphale was like a volcanic wall in motion, pressing a thigh between her legs, ebbing away, then pressing harder, using Crowley’s thigh to get herself off, looking for a vent to escape,  _ spew  _ hot, scorchi _ nnng _ — 

They both shuddered as the orgasm coursed through them, much faster than either anticipated. But when you realize at the same time your best friend and pilot slammed you into a door and had her wicked way with you that you’ve been waiting exactly for this to happen, then you had no right to complain. 

Hot breaths mingled, Aziraphale’s warm, soft body pressed her deliciously into the door; she felt safe, grounded,  _ there. _ Slowly, Crowley’s brain came back to her. She could focus on the room, their bunk beds pushed against the opposite wall, the one desk cluttered with Aziraphale’s reports and books and the chair buried under Crowley’s many pieces of clothing, all in a limited array of military green, black, and grey. She lost her only red blouse a few weeks ago when she bet against Anathema. 

Whenever she was cold, her mind reminded her of her failure to secure something that was already hers.

“Oh dear,” Aziraphale breathed into Crowley’s dishevelled hair, one hand still buried deep in it.

“Yeah. Quite.”

Crowley kept her eyes closed, utterly attuned to her angel, the warm breath caressing her sensitive neck, the way her arms were slung over Aziraphale’s shoulders, hands tangling in her long, curly hair.

Neither talked about this, neither even considered the after. This was the after and Crowley felt unmoored, unprotected, left outside to fight the cold, and she opened her eyes. But Aziraphale was leaning back slowly, a guarded look as she studied Crowley’s (flushed, still blissed out, slack) features. She felt her barriers ready to block the flow of emotions Crowley was receiving, ready to deny and chalk it up as just a side-effect of the drift, something that made them think irrationally for a few minutes.

But Aziraphale was searching her face. Was she looking for regret?  _ Oh, angel, if you knew…  _

But she knew. She  _ knew,  _ otherwise she wouldn’t have— 

Aziraphale stepped back. “I reckon we are both in need of a shower,” she said quietly as if afraid to break the silence between them.

Crowley’s throat vibrated with sounds and her hand was already grasping Aziraphale’s as if it was her only lifeline in a tempestuous ocean.  _ (It was, oh god, it was!) _

They both looked at Crowley’s hand, how it dared touch this perfect being. She didn’t have the courage to look Aziraphale in the eye, but she saw her step back in, crowding her against the door once again and Crowley stopped breathing altogether. There was so much awe she was receiving from Aziraphale in that moment, as if she couldn’t quite believe that Crowley wanted this, wanted  _ her. _

“Oh god, angel,” she whined, pulling her into a hug, peppering her neck with little kisses. Aziraphale was a furnace in motion, moulding herself so perfectly against Crowley, filling in all the empty spaces with warmth enough to make her shudder more than once. “I’ve been holding a torch for you since probably the day you refused to leave my side when I had the panic attack. You can’t— you can’t tell me you didn’t know? I mean, I didn’t know, but I’m—  _ me.  _ Don’t always pick up on glaring clues. But you? You’re the better half of us.”

Aziraphale giggled and then sniffled against her hair. Crowley pushed gently at her shoulders.

“Is that— are you cry— oh, angel.” She lovingly dried the first set of tears with her thumbs, smudging the streak of vaseline right in the valley between her nose and top of her cheek. She felt her face try to display complicated emotions, a mix of fond smiling and a crumbling edifice. “There’s nothing to cry about.”

“They’re joyful tears, silly,” she said with a huff and Crowley grinned. “You just— you said— you called me the better half. I must contest that.”

“No, you won’t. You’ll accept that as the whole and only truth that whatever god’s still around wanted on this green, monster-ridden earth.”

Aziraphale giggled again and Crowley joined her.

“That is not true, my dear. You are the best of us both. You with your unflinching kindness and your bravery in the face of danger. Your problem-solving mindset and your stubbornness. You are such an incredible person and I feel blessed to have you by my side. As  _ my  _ co-pilot.”

Crowley sniffled. “Dammit, angel. You had to go and make me all teary. We just… we just had sex! It was supposed to continue being, y’know, steamy and—”

“Who says it cannot be?” 

Their foreheads were touching and Aziraphale was definitely looking down at her lips. Crowley tipped her head just so, just enough to press their lips together, and  _ god  _ it was like coming home — where she never had a real home — and being wrenched from within her body to be cuddled within Aziraphale’s arms.

“Would—” Aziraphale cut herself off. There was a faint flush to her skin which Crowley couldn’t determine if it was because of their earlier exertions or because of what she was trying to say. “Would you join me?”

Her heart started, but it jumped right into her throat to inflate and block the passage. It was with enormous effort that she made space for words to get out.

“Yes,” she whispered, “yes, always.”

The pleased smile stayed on her face as if Crowley had just found the winning combination to her angel’s heart. 

They had perfect water pressure and the stall was just big enough to admit two people, although in extremely close proximity. It was not the first time she had seen Aziraphale naked, and still with all the training she underwent, her body retained a corpulent form. She looked soft and approachable and  _ breakable.  _

Crowley didn’t even need to learn her lesson that Aziraphale was in no way  _ breakable.  _ She had taken a look at her and had  _ known  _ even before Aziraphale had landed a faux-hit on Crowley when they’d tested for compatibility. Her angel was the strongest woman she had ever been in the presence of, Marshal notwithstanding.

But now, both of them naked in more ways than one, she hesitated in touching her partner’s back. Yet, even as her eyes were unable to do anything but stare and take in and caress and  _ devour,  _ Aziraphale reached a hand behind her and caught Crowley’s hips, pulling her in.

“I’m cold,” she said over her shoulder even though she was the only one that the hot water was hitting.

So Crowley did the only responsible thing: her scrawny self enveloped Aziraphale’s generous forms as much as possible. She sighed and let her head fall back on Crowley’s shoulder. It was not possible to fall more in love with someone, but Crowley was doing that, her heart was soaring in her chest, beating a tempo hard enough to be able to break through her chest and tackle Aziraphale’s heart.

It was such a silly thought that she snorted and kissed her partner’s shoulder, lips caressing smooth skin, up, up towards her neck. With delicate hands she pushed away Aziraphale’s wet curls so she could administer the proper care she needed.

“You’re tickling me, dear,” she huffed softly and Crowley grinned, close-mouthed, right behind Aziraphale’s ear.

“Wasn’t aware that you’re ticklish.”

“If you had any trousers on, they’d be on fire already.”

They both giggled at that and then Aziraphale turned in her arms and pushed Crowley against the unforgiving cold and wet wall of their shower stall, pulling a gasp from her.

“You’re making a habit of this,” Crowley said, half breathless, half dizzy.

“Of what?” Aziraphale said low, sensuous and barely touching Crowley’s parched lips. “Kissing you?”

Crowley’s hand shimmied its way into Aziraphale’s hair, and even though it lost the wispy, curly look, she still managed to gently thread her long fingers through the wet locks.

And because Crowley had always been impatient, she moved forward a bit and tasted Aziraphale’s lips playfully and shortly, before she leaned back again.

“That, too,” she said, and Aziraphale’s eyes acquired crow feet at their corners. Goodness, but her angel was impossibly beautiful when she smiled like that. “But I was referring to the wall slam.”

Aziraphale’s hands, still on Crowley’s hips, pushed just as her lower half pushed, too, and Crowley gasped softly, feeling the pressure in her chest. The softness that was her angel, a softness that hid a core of steel, but also gentleness. She still had to get on Aziraphale’s bad side. 

“You mean this?”

“You wicked angel,” Crowley murmured against the corner of Aziraphale’s lips as she turned her mouth towards less erotic areas on Crowley’s face, namely her cheek.

But she was not sure about that. She was feeling pretty turned on from the delicate kiss placed there by her angel.

“You haven’t seen wickedness, my dear.”

“Oh? Haven’t I? When I’m always around you,  _ in  _ your head, and now— now, this.”

“What is this?”

“This.”

“Use more words, darling.”

“You teasing, wicked—”

Aziraphale kissed her in the way only long, lost lovers would: slowly, a press of lips, close-mouthed but delicious.

“You’re repeating yourself.”

“Good,” Crowley said, eyes half-lidded, her nether regions soaked through while most of her body was still dry. “Means you’re making me incoherent.”

Aziraphale huffed a laugh and then—  _ then  _ she attacked her mouth like she was impatient as well. As if that sensuous game had tested her patience for too long. 

A full body press was  _ everything  _ Crowley needed to write home about. But Crowley wouldn’t: one, because she forsook her family long ago, and two, this right here belonged to her, to them. 

She gasped into Aziraphale’s mouth as her angel shifted, their breasts and stomachs squished together, and Crowley wanted to both continue gasping and stop breathing altogether, unable to decide which one would keep the delicious press of their bodies going for the rest of their lives.

“My dear,” Aziraphale breathed into the corner of her mouth, nuzzling down under her jaw.

Crowley tilted her head, giving Aziraphale all the access she needed as her trimmed nails bit into Aziraphale’s strong bicep. She hummed, the vibrations somewhat cushioned by her partner’s impressive chest, but not enough to not feel them in her own mostly flat chest.

Aziraphale shifted again, a strong thigh glided in-between Crowley’s (happily) opening legs, and a hand pushed at Crowley’s — caressing the scars left behind by the drivesuit from their first Kaiju mission — until Aziraphale had it pinned by the wrist above Crowley’s head. She felt like her knees were made of liquid, spilling all over the place. But her angel kept her well-pressed against the wall and on her feet. 

Until she replaced her thigh with her hand, and feeling Aziraphale finger her clit in such short, confident strokes, had Crowley melt on the spot. It didn’t take long for her to come a second time, panting into Aziraphale’s shoulder as her angel pressed kisses along her neck and shoulder and jaw, whispering reassurances and praise Crowley was sure she didn’t deserve.

“You do, my dear,” Aziraphale said into her neck. “More than anyone else.”

They ended up helping each other clean themselves. The thrill of the unspoken ‘I’m nowhere near done with you’ that Crowley could hear in her voice and read in her dark gaze, had her rush through the whole washing process to Aziraphale’s amusement.

She got to eat her pilot out leisurely, teasingly, guided by the hand in her hair and the sounds her tongue elicited from Aziraphale. God, she was so drunk on her smell, her juices, the feel of her powerful thighs straining under her palms, not because Crowley had the strength to keep her hips from moving, but because Aziraphale was trying to keep herself in control.

Crowley wished she could see her lose control, use Crowley to get herself off because at that point she was so turned on that she’d climax just by servicing her.

Aziraphale must have felt some of what Crowley was thinking because she groaned and her hips began a gentle thrusting motion, easing Crowley into it until they found a rhythm. She knew her jaw would make her pay hell later, but in that moment she couldn’t care less. Aziraphale’s pleasure was the top of her concerns.

“Yes, my darling, yes, just like that, oh  _ god! _ That tongue—  _ mmhah  _ — yes, like tha _ aaht.”  _

Hearing a woman, so composed and confident in herself, falling apart because of Crowley’s mouth was the most intoxicating thing Crowley would ever hear in her entire life.

She desperately wanted to get herself off, but instead her hands bit down into Aziraphale’s thighs, her own hips straining against the mattress, finding no relief but unable to stop. Aziraphale was becoming more and more vocal, her hips losing control as Crowley thrust her tongue into her hot opening until she started to stroke her clit, at which point Crowley lost track of what was happening, her mouth locked against Aziraphale’s most intimate opening.

It was only when her thighs started quivering and her rhythm faltering that Crowley realized she was close, so she doubled her efforts, helping her chase that climax.

When she came, Crowley worked her through it until Aziraphale’s hips stopped stuttering. Lifting her messy face up, she looked down at this gorgeous creature, flushed and incredibly arousing in her blissed out state, and her chest constricted painfully against the onslaught of feelings and emotions.

Aziraphale’s pleased smile preceded the hand that lifted, waiting for Crowley to take it. But the moment she did, she was grabbed and pulled up on top of Aziraphale, such a brazen and  _ fucking hot  _ display of power, her knuckles pressed against her angel’s lips.

“My lovely girl,” Aziraphale murmured into her knuckles and Crowley’s horny body liquefied right there and then.

She went willingly when Aziraphale pulled her down into a heated kiss as she manoeuvred them into a reclining position. Crowley was pretty sure she wouldn’t be able to lie on a cushion from that point on and not think about how amazing Aziraphale’s body felt underneath her.

“Did you get off?” Aziraphale asked against her lips, even though she already knew the answer to that. Still, Crowley loved the raspy quality of her voice. She shuddered and shook her head before diving down for another heated kiss.

Her hands roamed over Crowley’s back and sides (which elicited a deep moan) as she kissed Crowley like she was starved for oxygen. Then she grabbed her skinny arse and she groaned into the kiss, her hips thrusting up into Aziraphale’s stomach on instinct. Aziraphale encouraged that, and Crowley sort of climbed up a bit on her, her nipples grazing over Aziraphale’s before they moved on top of her breasts.

They both moaned and panted into each other’s mouths at that and Aziraphale’s finger thrust into Crowley’s wet opening from behind.

_ “Fuck!  _ More, please!”

She ended up stradling Aziraphale, her pelvis thrusting uncontrollably against her stomach, making a mess of it. And then Aziraphale shifted her hand so it came between them, and this time she inserted two fingers.

“Can you come from my fingers alone?”

Crowley kissed her for a while before she leaned back a bit, feeling so turned on she was dizzy. “I could come just from you reciting the entire Jaeger Programme document right now.”

Aziraphale chuckled. “Let’s leave work outside our room, my dear.”

“Yes.” Aziraphale thumbed her clit teasingly. “ _ Fuck, yes,  _ anything, everything you want just _ please don’t stop!” _

“Dangerous words, my love.”

It was a testament of how horny and far gone Crowley was that she didn’t register the change in endearment. As it was, Aziraphale began thrusting into her earnestly and Crowley let herself go, a hand against the wall above Aziraphale to support her and give her leverage in equal measure. Head thrown back as her free hand supported her pilot’s head while she mouthed at her nipples, licking and abusing them with both her wicked tongue but also her hand. All coherent thought fled Crowley’s brain as she chased her orgasm mindlessly, trusting Aziraphale to get her there and catch her when she’d freefall.

The squelching sounds of her fingers thrusting into her hot, wet entrance, and the moaning while she licked and worried Crowley’s nipple between her lips sent Crowley over the edge so fast she blacked out for a few moments.

She came down to Aziraphale gently working her fingers and feather-like kisses around her areolas.

“Would you let me lick you clean, my dear?”

“Fuck. Are you trying to make me come again?”

They both giggled as Aziraphale caressed her thighs, but then Crowley looked down at her, feeling the feedback of the drift between them, and nodded. Aziraphale beamed at her and gently pushed her so that they changed positions.

It almost felt like a massage, in the weird way that someone eating you out can feel like that, but Crowley would be hard pressed to describe it as anything else. Aziraphale delicately licked her clean, though she made the most embarrassing and arousing noises Crowley ever heard someone make while between her legs (and the number of people who got the privilege of being between her legs could be counted on three fingers.)

She wanted to ask if it was as good as she was making it sound, but she received the answer in the form of thrill and fondness and a different type of hunger than usual, all three trickling down to Crowley.

Aziraphale took her fill of Crowley, and Crowley was so high from endorphins and the feedback of emotions from her pilot that she felt as if she was floating somewhere above her own body. Aziraphale kissed her way up her stomach and between her small breasts, on her neck and jaw and finally, she pressed a close-mouthed kiss on her lips.

Crowley had so many quips poised on her tongue, but then Aziraphale gathered her in her arms and she promptly forgot what language even was, choosing to melt into her pilot’s embrace and fall asleep like that. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally, after 43k, the E-rating comes into play.   
> Wonder if next time I can do an even slower burn. Hmmmmmm.


	12. Us

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heads up, there's somnophilia in the last scene in this chapter. Fully consented prior to it. In case that's not your cup of tea, you can skip about the first half of that scene.

* * *

***

“Crowley, you know I always best you in hand-to-hand combat. I don’t know why you keep insisting we train like this.”

“I need to master this skill, don’t I? Failure is the bedrock of success or how was it.”

It had been a week of relative tranquility at the Shatterdome. No Kaiju signature detected, but that meant nothing. The world was still holding its breath, waiting for the other shoe to drop. But Marshal was not leaving that to chance. They’d almost hashed an entire plan, and the best part, in Crowley’s opinion, was the part where she and angel got to drop enough C4 to level half of Sydney, though that part still needed some ironing.

Crowley could feel the anticipation dancing in the marrow of her bones, so she invited Aziraphale to another session of sparring.

Aziraphale smiled the kind of pleased smile that almost disarmed Crowley completely, but she expected the strike, and she fell back, putting some distance between them before she stepped back in. The reason why she insisted to grapple with each other was because— on the off chance that Crowley thought on her two feet again and the angle was precarious enough for the both of them, she’d be able to drag Aziraphale down with her. That was it.

 _No one_ had any _idea_ how angel’s body felt like pressed so fully against her! If she had a dick, she sure as hell wouldn’t have insisted on this type of combat.

The smiled took an edge to it and Crowley had a moment of _ohnosheknows_ before she was reminded that it had been a week and two days since the last time they drifted. They returned to be their own persons, so Aziraphale couldn’t have been able to feel anything Crowley — horny Crowley — felt in that moment.

Then again, Aziraphale didn’t really need the drift to tell what Crowley was thinking. She’d been telling her that she was an open book, but Crowley had put that to test and it turned out that no one else could read her. So that meant that Aziraphale had some nifty people reading skills which put Crowley at a disadvantage.

Either way, she got exactly what she had been waiting for: Aziraphale, through a series of calculated steps and maneuvers, pinned Crowley bodily to the mattress.

She smothered the turned on groan-moan, but not fast enough. Aziraphale huffed an amused laugh against the side of her sweaty face and when Crowley looked up at her, the knowing look greeted her.

“Fuck, you knew.”

Aziraphale chuckled, but didn’t relent from the pressure she was putting on Crowley.

“I’d worry if I didn’t, my dear.” She shifted, but only to hold her wrists in one hand (and that melted Crowley’s spine) and move her leg between Crowley’s.

 _“Fuck,”_ she breathed out, head tilting back without real conscious thought, and legs shifting to accommodate her angel.

“Such a temptation you are,” she murmured and sounded like she was going to attack Crowley’s throat, but only hot breath caressed her skin. “I’d have you right here, my darling, if we wouldn’t be at risk to be walked on.”

The Sydney Kwoon Room had no door, so even if it was lunch time, people could still walk by. Still, Aziraphale’s free hand trailed down her left side, opposite the open door, all the way to her jutting hip bone, fingertips teasing at the strip of skin there. Crowley lost control of her breath, unable to think clearly when so much of Aziraphale was pressed into her.

The teasing fingers pushed a bit under the hem of Crowley’s tee, thumb doing the same but under the band of her yoga pants, and her leg bent up, pushing her hips up to get that touch where she really wanted it to be.

But Aziraphale chuckled, and pushed herself up, offering her hand.

“You bastard,” Crowley grumbled as she accepted.

“Careful, Crowley.” There was a lilt and a threat wrapped up in one there, and the thrill that shot Crowley’s hot spine and teased the pit of her stomach made her reckless.

She followed Aziraphale to the edge of the mat to put on their boots and then towards the door. “You’re such a bastard tease, you are! Now I’m— _oompf!”_

The air was punched out of her as she was slammed into the wall next to the door, in an alcove behind a pillar that was sticking out of the wall. She was kissed within an inch of her life, Aziraphale putting everything into it to get Crowley so worked up that when she pulled back, Crowley followed doggedly until she was stopped by a hand on her chest.

“No, that’s as far as you go, Crowley.” She was such a bastard! Using her name like that, like it was punishment for something. 

“You can’t be serious!” 

“I am.” Aziraphale pointed a finger at her. “And if you get yourself off before I say so, there will be hell to pay.”

Crowley felt so scandalized by that that for a few moments she couldn’t string two syllables together. Aziraphale was waiting patiently for her to resuscitate the brain cells that had fainted again. 

Then she stepped back in, crowding Crowley and her brain cells passed out again, her eyes zeroing in on her angel’s lips.

“Now, if you behave, you’ll get a reward tonight.”

“Oh?”

Aziraphale whispered the many wicked things she had in store for Crowley and her head thunked against the metal, hands drawing Aziraphale’s hips flush against hers.

“God, I won’t be able to focus on anything today. And it’s your fault!”

“Now, now,” she neated out Crowley’s tee pointlessly, “I know you’re better than that. You’ve built up such a good mental resistance and resilience.”

“When we’re both focused on one thing with one goal in mind, not…”

“But we are focused on one thing.” She smiled. “We both look forward to tonight. We both have a goal in mind.” 

“Angel,” she whined pathetically, digging her fingers into Aziraphale’s glutes. She drew in a sharp breath, her hips rolling once against Crowley. That had her straightened up, poised to attack.

There was a delicious flush to her angel’s cheeks and Crowley was sure that if her hand traveled down, between her legs, she’d be able to sway her angel’s resolve.

But just as she was going for that, Aziraphale placed a close-mouthed kiss against Crowley’s lips — which did wonders to throw her off her newfound focus — before she stepped back.

“I’ll be seeing you tonight, my dear. And remember, I’ll know.”

Crowley did try to stop her, but she was fast when she wanted to be and Crowley knew it was a moot point to chase after her. Her angel was determined to keep her waiting until they retreated to their room.

With a resigned sigh, she squared her shoulders against a day of endless frustrations.

***

“Crowley, be a dear and help me with my hair,” she said later that afternoon. “We’re having reporters come in today to photograph us and ask some questions about the programme.”

“Ugh. Why do they keep springing this shit on us? Can’t they make appointments or something? We’re not zoo animals, there for them to photograph and make faces at.”

She momentarily forgot about her _other_ frustration, still going strong since their sparring session that morning.

“I know, darling. But as frustrating as this impromptu session is, we still need to be ready for it.”

“Yeah, in full gear. In _this_ weather.” Aziraphale nodded, sitting on the chair and waiting patiently for Crowley. They were forced to leave the door open for the air to circulate, the A/C in their section broken. “Won’t it be a hassle with the helmet? Bet they’ll want us to put the blasted things on.”

“Not if you do the French crown braid.”

“Right. My fingers need training, too.”

Aziraphale smiled sweetly at her, though there was a glint in her eyes. Crowley was still of half a mind to just jump her girlfriend right there and then, but first she’d have to close the door and that would alert her clever girl about her plan, so she ruthlessly stomped on that half-formed plan.

“Right,” she repeated because otherwise she’d have to acknowledge how much that sight affected her, and the knowing smile was enough teasing right now.

It suited her. Yes, the bastard smile, too. But the braid— people often referred to it as a halo braid. Crowley would know. She’d done her research on the many types of braid that exist when Aziraphale first asked for help with her mid-back long hair. She’d practiced a lot, too. Braids were _a pain_ if one didn’t have much patience with things. Her saving grace was that Aziraphale’s hair was not so soft that it slipped from her fingers.

“Sit still, angel,” Crowley murmured absently, midway through the braid.

“Could I have your leg, darling?”

Crowley snorted. “Anybody passing by would think that there’s some funny business going on he— hey, stop moving, I said!”

But Aziraphale looked up at her— stared and _stared_ with her big, doe eyes— 

“Fine! Fine. Take it.”

With a pleased smile, Aziraphale took the offered leg and placed it in-between hers, sole of her boot planted on the chair. Now, that was a recent habit of Aziraphale’s, and the only way Crowley could get her impatient angel to sit as still as possible while she did all the hard work. She didn’t do much to Crowley’s leg except caress it idly, but sometimes— 

“Hey, no! Don’t take them out of the boot. Oh, come on, you bastard! I’m doing you a favour here!”

“And I appreciate it very much, my dear,” she said, her smile hugging every word as she continued to take out her army trousers from where she rigorously trapped them in her leather boot.

“Bastard,” grumbled Crowley before a crash of consonants not unlike _ngk_ ushered out at the feel of Aziraphale’s warm palm dragging its plump self up her shin.

“There’s still a handful of hours until we’re relieved of our duty,” she _purred,_ the bastard! “Be careful, my dear, lest,” her hand travelled further up her shin, “I renew your frustrations.”

“As if the mere sight of you doesn’t do just that,” she grumbled, eyes pointedly focused on the crown of hair she was braiding.

“Flattery will get you nowhere.” But she stopped caressing her leg with the tip of her index and middle finger in that suggestive way.

***

Crowley came out of the bathroom wearing only a pair of black knickers and the white towel that was hanging from her neck and covering her breasts. The temperatures only got worse that week; they said that it was the hottest week Sydney had seen in more than ten years. Yeah, no kidding. She hoped she’d never have to repeat the photo session and subsequent interview of a few days ago because she wouldn’t stop at _just_ being insufferably snarky. 

She went straight to the mini fridge under the tv in the corner, and promptly stepped onto something quite sharp for her bare sole.

 _“Ow!_ What the hell?” She picked up the offending object.

“Oh, that’s my tape record. So sorry, my dear, it must have fallen from my pocket when I showered earlier,” she said absentmindedly.

“What do you need a tape recorder for?”

“Record my thoughts, mostly,” Aziraphale said, still nose-deep into the book. “Sometimes I need to vent or just talk about what goes through my head.”

“Huh.”

Crowley placed the recorder on the desk and then took the glass bottle with water they always kept in the fridge. She didn’t even bother taking a glass, drinking straight from it, knowing that Aziraphale would not approve of such barbaric display of mannerism.

“Crowley.” There it was. “You look sinful.”

That had Crowley turn around to face her, the bottle still very much attached to her lips.

“Mmfh?”

Aziraphale was drinking her in as greedily as Crowley had been drinking the cold water. She was sitting on her bed, both her and Crowley’s pillow used as support for her back. The reading glasses were forgotten in one hand as she unashamedly studied Crowley from wet hair to bare toes.

“Yeah, well it’s hot as hell in here. They still haven’t repaired the A\C in this unit, so I’m just trying to survive. I’m amazed you can stand clothes on you at all.”

She pointed at Aziraphale’s tank top, no bra, and the loose lounge pants she was wearing.

“I’m quite all right if I don’t move much.”

She shook her head. “Human metabolism is so weird.” She placed the bottle back in the fridge, wiping the condensation from her hands on the towel.

Then she had an idea.

Without giving herself away, she made her way towards the bed and grabbed Aziraphale’s foot. She yelped, not expecting the cold hands, made colder from the glass bottle, and Crowley giggled. Cheap entertainment.

The issue was that _that_ cheap entertainment grabbed her forearm and pulled her in, making Crowley sprawl on top of Aziraphale’s legs with an undignified squawk.

“Now, now, whatever should we do about that rude gesture, hm?”

Crowley looked over her shoulder, smirk firm in place before she wiggled her arse.

“In such special circumstances,” Crowley said, trying to adopt a snobbish attitude, “I believe a bit of force applied to, ah, the _bottom_ of the situation might appease the sensibilities of the victim.”

Aziraphale’s eyes glinted. “Is that so?” Her hand was already caressing Crowley’s arse and she tensed a bit, anticipating the first blow.

But it never came. Instead, Aziraphale leant over and kissed a Venus dimple.

“I do not believe that such force is necessary.”

She slowly made her way up Crowley’s spine to Crowley’s delight and uncomfortable feeling in her stomach. She was used to sex being rough and fast and raw. But Aziraphale always touched her as if she was something to be treasured, each caress a revelation. 

No, the awe and love on her angel’s face whenever she looked at Crowley was _a revelation._

“Why would I hurt someone so precious to me?”

Crowley shivered when Aziraphale finished that sentence with a kiss at the edge of her right shoulder blade.

“Come here, dear girl.”

She followed and found herself straddling Aziraphale’s thighs. Being as tall as Crowley was, meant that she had to sit back on Aziraphale’s thighs to not hit her head on the bed above.

They looked at each other for a while, just taking the other in, and Crowley cupped Aziraphale’s cheek, then brought the other to frame her face. And then she pressed, distorting Aziraphale’s features comically.

“How did I get so lucky?” Crowley murmured.

Hands grasped her wrists and she relented, watching Aziraphale press kisses to her wrists.

“You didn’t give up on me.”

Crowley studied her face. “I wanted to. That day. You were so infuriating with your hero complex.”

“No hero complex, my dear. I couldn’t very well let them get away with important Jaeger parts.”

“Parts that I helped steal.”

“And you’ve made amends ever since then.”

She snorted. “By becoming a part of the very people that I stole from.”

“By choosing to right the wrong you had taken part in.”

“Not sure about that. I still think that I got incredibly lucky.”

“Nonsense. You are where you are right now because of your hard work.”

“Not what I meant, angel.” She grinned and went for a soft, slow kiss. When she leaned back a bit, she said, “I wouldn’t have stayed, not for Marshal or the world or some abstract sense of duty.” Her eyes roamed over Aziraphale’s face, shifting when she felt Aziraphale palming her sides. “You’re the only reason why I stayed. You’ve always been.”

Aziraphale smiled, her eyes so clear and brimming with emotion that Crowley dived in for another slow kiss, trying to pack everything Crowley had ever felt for this incredibly wonderful woman, reassurance and fondness and care and, yes, love.

They made out without hurry, hands roaming over each other’s body. At some point, Aziraphale lost her tank top, too, and they explored wide expanses of skin with no end in mind.

Crowley’s head was pleasantly cottony, no worry or overthinking, not even any serious thought. She simply existed within Aziraphale’s arms and that was exactly what she needed. They dozed off, kissed lazily, the A/C kicked in and they enjoyed the cool temperatures in each other’s arms.

***

Aziraphale had found a new outlet for the excess energy she got after a Kaiju fight, and it had been Crowley’s idea. Mostly. 

She’d suggested to her angel that she should have her wicked way with her instead of hitting the gym, since the last time it worked out so well for them. Truth to be told, she had been inspired by that impromptu first time. Fact was that Crowley was always down for sex with her in whatever form or position it came in, so why not allow her angel to use her this way, too? It wasn’t like she didn’t love touching her angel, having her hands all over her, squeezing biceps and her generous breasts or back or that irresistible bum or simply carding fingers through her hair. 

But their sex drives didn’t align all the time. Sometimes Crowley had it in her to go for a second, even a third orgasm, but most of the time it was Aziraphale who, even when she felt horny, took a while to get going and when she did, she was a ravenous creature and Crowley could pull up to four orgasms out of her, on one memorable occasion.

Aziraphale built her body for endurance while Crowley was better at striking once but good. That being said, Crowley’s favourite kink was when Aziraphale used her to get herself off, no toys, no ties, just her angel’s body and imagination. She even discovered that she liked it and enthusiastically consented to it when Aziraphale woke her up with either two fingers thrusting deep and slow or her tongue or both at the same time.

The only issue this time was that when she groggily swam back to wakefulness she knew she hadn’t fallen asleep long ago because she was ready to fall back, if it wasn’t for the gentle sway of her body and the furnace that was her angel pressed against her arse.

She had Crowley’s leg up against her front while she was straddling her other leg, her slick vulva pushing against Crowley’s, mingling their pre-come. The stirs of her building orgasm felt so far away.

“Nnngh.”

“Oh dear, I’m terribly sorry for waking you up.”

Blearily, Crowley managed to open one eye and peer up at her angel, cheeks flushed and completely naked (as was Crowley’s lower half, even though she remembered she had fallen asleep in a pair of women boxers along with one of Aziraphale’s tees). She didn’t stop her humping or her hips from gyrating and making Crowley involuntarily close her eyes as a stronger flare of arousal unfolded in the pit of her stomach.

“‘S okay. Keep going, you’re won’ful ange—”

She had a hard time making her mouth work as two great forces were pulling her in different directions: Aziraphale with her delicious body and her own tired body towards Dreamland.

One hand did sneak up on Aziraphale’s thigh, reaching so far as her arse cheek where she squeezed in encouragement and Aziraphale moaned softly, her hips buckling. 

Without even questioning her next action, she shimmied her other hand between them and placed her middle finger on her clit so as whenever Aziraphale passed over, it would both press it down against Crowley, but also create more friction for Aziraphale.

“Oh, _oh darling, yes,_ you’re so good to me.”

Her hips began a more alert rhythm and Crowley smiled sleepily. Even though she tried squeezing her angel’s bum every once in a while, it was too much effort, so she pushed what concentration she had towards keeping her hands where they were.

Aziraphale’s moans were more insistent now, as well as her gasps and fast breathing. She was approaching her climax and Crowley was biting her lip softly, her lower half more awake than five minutes ago as it kept sending sparks of arousal that made her toes curl weakly.

Then Aziraphale came with a strangled moan, her entire body going rigid, especially the cheek that was under Crowley’s hand.

“That was incredible, darling.”

Crowley tried for a cheeky grin, but she just knew that with her eyes closed she couldn’t look like anything but half asleep.

“Let me take care of you, my love.”

She hummed as she let Aziraphale manhandle her on her back and then push her legs wider apart before she felt her angel’s flat tongue swipe up once. Crowley shivered.

“Feels ssso good _mmm,”_ Crowley said.

Aziraphale continued lapping at her, slow and unhurried, alternating between dipping her tongue into Crowley and teasing her clit until Crowley tensed and came. Her angel cleaned everything before she laid a trail of kisses over her stomach all the way to her small breasts where she stopped to lavish them in attention. Crowley didn’t care that the angel bunched up her tee all the way into her neck; she was too sleepy to care.

“I love you, darling,” Aziraphale breathed into her neck.

“Mm, love y’too,” she murmured, folding her legs and arms to trap her angel between them.

Crowley loved when Aziraphale pressed her down with her body. It settled something volatile inside her. It grounded her. That was how she fell asleep, one arm slung over Aziraphale’s back and the other one in her blonde hair, her angel’s lips warm soft against her neck.

But when she woke up next, she had her boxers on, and an arm slung over Aziraphale’s thighs.

“Wha’ time issit?”

“M, oh, a bit over three.”

“‘Noon?”

“No, morning.”

Crowley blinked her eyes open and looked up at her angel. “Angel, are you knitting at arse o’clock in the morning?”

Aziraphale didn’t even look at her as she was concentrating on making another complicated loop. She had a half arm’s length of knitted— something.

She hummed in acknowledgement and Crowley had to prop herself on one elbow, her other hand folding in so she was palming the thigh closer to her side. She loved sleeping on her stomach, but the height difference between Aziraphale’s thigh and Crowley’s body made the joint at her shoulder ache.

“What are you making now?”

“Another jumper for you. You keep stealing mine.”

“Because the ones I have are a too-tight fit. I like ‘em roomy.”

“Then I will make this one twice your size, would that please you?”

Crowley paused. “I don’t know. Will they smell like you?”

At that, Aziraphale met Crowley’s gaze and smiled fondly. “If you’re the one wearing them how can they smell of me?”

“Then no. Pass. You can give it to Anathema. Maybe she’ll give mine back.”

“The red one you lost in that silly bet?”

“Wasn’t a silly bet,” Crowley mumbled, laying back on her pillow.

“It was. Trust me, darling.”

Crowley peered one eye open from where most of her face was pressed into the pillow.

“Had to defend your honour.”

Aziraphale giggled. “There was no honour to defend, my dear. We’ve been over this.”

“She doubted you could eat my dessert on top of yours!”

“I had a stomach ache that day.”

“But you ate all o’ yours!”

“Well, I wasn’t going to let food go to waste. Not when the cooks put so much effort into making it.”

There was her prim angel. Crowley sniggered into her pillow, then turned on her side and tried her best to glue herself to Aziraphale’s leg.

“Dear, it’s a bit difficult to work like this.”

Crowley mumbled something into her hip.

“What was that?”

“Why did you put on clothes?”

“I can’t certainly sleep naked, can I? And you get cold easily.”

“Would certainly make it easier to put on our suits.”

Aziraphale hummed, more concentrated on knitting than on Crowley. 

Well, she couldn’t have that, could she?

Without missing a beat, she sneaked her head under Aziraphale’s arm and pushed herself up, so Aziraphale had to lean back a bit and interrupt her work to make space for her.

“Crowley.”

“Still feeling restless?” she asked softly, studying her face.

Aziraphale’s frown melted into fondness. “Just a bit. You helped, darling.”

She didn’t know why or how, but after everything they did together, the adventurous sex and teasing, her angel could still make her blush.

Aziraphale saw that and with a reserved smile, she placed her knitwear and glasses on the table near the bed and rearranged Crowley’s bed hair. The attention made Crowley relax and close her eyes until she felt warm lips on hers, and she melted completely into her angel.

“Let’s go back to sleep,” Aziraphale said against her lips.

Crowley stole another kiss, and then shifted over and let her angel pull her into her arms.


	13. Interlude

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the bathroom break I was talking about in the A/N of ch 1. You're welcome.

* * *

***

[Newt]: This is tape recording number 0001. The first in a series of recordings I’m doing at the request of Doctor Anathema Device for her research paper on Jaeger pilots. I will be recording the pilots’ responses to a series of focus-questions before and after the drift. For this experiment to fully work, further documentation of the pilots during the drift would be required, but is impossible to have unless one counts the registered dialogue that passes between two pilots while they are engaged in a Kaiju fight. Even that is incomplete, as most of the information passes from one brain to the other and what can be heard in those recordings are just the highlights.

Today, I’m recording Zephyrus Anemoi’s co-pilot, Ranger Antonia Crowley. Sorry for that long introduction. I needed to make that statement since this is the first one.

[Crowley whistles]: What’s the reward?

[Newt]: Uh, reward? [papers rustling] Anathema didn’t tell me anything about— 

[Crowley snickers]

[Newt]: Oh, right. You were just— kidding. Okay. Let’s get to the first question.

[Crowley]: Hope it’s not a 20-question game.

[Newt]: That would imply I answer them, too.

[Crowley]: … right. So? What’s the first one?

[Newt]: Yes. Could you describe the drift? 

[Crowley]: What a cold opening. Cutting right to the chase.

[Newt]: Yeah. So please give as many details as you can.

[Crowley]: All for scientific purposes, eh?

— 

Right. Let’s see. Drifting— drifting is like, hm, like getting sucked out of your skull? Hard to explain. It’s a weird feeling, but that’s the best I could describe it. It’s like I’m sucked out of my brain through a straw only to find Aziraphale’s mind at the other end. Like a river running backwards towards its source only to spill into another? Does that make sense? It does in my head. It’s a mind-meld. Isn’t that what Anathema calls it?

[Newt]: Doctor Device’s opinions do not count here. This is about— 

[Crowley snorts]: _Doctor Device._ Sounds so kinky when you say it.

[Newt stammering]: I— that is— it’s not— um— please, could we— uh… 

[static-recorder fumbling]

[Crowley, closer to the recorder mic]: Oy, Anathema! Your boyfriend is so cute when he blushes! Might steal him—

[Newt]: Please give the recorder back! 

[Crowley, continued]: If you’re not careful!

[Newt]: You don’t even swing that way!

[Crowley, amused, a lilt in her voice]: I might for you.

[Newt]: The record— [scrape of chair and table] —come on— [boots shuffling; clothes rustle; static] — stop. Give it back! I don’t think Aziraphale would take it lightly if she heard that!

[long, staticky pause]

[Crowley, comically serious]: So what’s the next question?

[more rustling and scraping against the cement floor]

[Newt]: Right. Okay. The next— lemme see. Skip this one. 

[Crowley, softly]: You’re gonna cut that part, aren’t you?

[Newt]: Of course. That’s unprofessional and pointless teasing. Besides, it’s better if Anathema doesn’t know about that and potentially use it against you for teasing me. Even though I know you mean nothing by it— Aziraphale might not see it that way. 

[Crowley, swallows audibly]: Yeah, you’re right.

[Newt]: ‘Course I am. Hmm, this one is for later— You’re a silly goose, though.

[Crowley]: Excuse me?

[Newt]: This one has been answered already. You are. Why would you even play around with that when you know how much Aziraphale cares about you? And she knows how to strike where it hurts.

[Crowley, agitated]: I’m not! I— that was just harmless— it was a joke, okay?

[Newt]: You know that jokingly people tell the truth, right?

[Crowley]: No, really. I was just teasing you! Pulling your leg! You’re easy to tease! Didn’t mean anything by it!

[Newt, amused]: Let me put it this way: how would you feel if Aziraphale teased someone like you did?

[Crowley, floundering]: She wouldn’t— Besides, uh, I wouldn’t mind.

[Newt]: Really? Ah, this one! Found it.

[Crowley, grumbling]: Yes, really! What— who she teases is her business.

[Newt]: Now that sounds interesting. You wouldn’t feel a smidgeon jealous that Aziraphale devotes such attention to this hypothetical person?

[Crowley, unsettled]: It’s none of my business. I said that. Could we get on with the questions? I have places to be.

[Newt, amused]: Okay. So. What can you tell us about the drift leaking into your lives? Anything that would help a non-pilot understand it.

[Crowley]: Hm. That’s a loaded one. Don’t even know where to begin with it.

[Newt]: Anywhere you like.

[long pause]

[Crowley]: I read some articles in a few newspapers and magazines some time ago — found them thrown in a dumpster — where they kept referring to the drift as an understanding, and now that I’ve experienced it, that feels like such an understatement.

We call it understanding of the other and self because we don’t have a word that can fully describe what happens during a drift. When we come back from a fight and we’re in the same room, I’m constantly aware of Aziraphale’s presence in the same way that I’m aware of each one of my limbs. Yes, that’s the best analogy I can think of. You anticipate their moves and words, to some extent their thoughts. Your co-pilot is part of you and you are a part of them. It’s not telepathy, nor is it understanding, but something that transcends it. Bigger even than empathy, although that one comes close to it. It’s knowledge of this person and yourself put together in such a way as to give you even more insight into who you are.

It makes you— it made _me_ learn that she’s my better half.

[tape recorder stops]

“Anathema? What are you— oh god!”

“Hello, sleepy head,” she said, bending down to place a kiss on his forehead.

“Please tell me that—”

“I didn’t listen to the first half of the recording?” She smirked the kind of smirk that Newt knew from the university days when she was about to take her justified revenge with cold and proven facts on whoever disrespected her within the scientific community. “No such luck. You shouldn’t have fallen asleep at your desk before deleting the incriminatory parts.”

“I was— I was gonna do that! But I also got side-tracked with transcribing the details in the fields you— oh no, please don’t go all Avenge Scientist on Crowley!”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” She tapped the corner of the tape recorder against her palm. “Besides, I think I’m overdue for a conversation with Aziraphale over beer. It’s been a while since we went to the bar.”

“Anathema, honey, please don’t stir a pot you—”

“Oh, but I’m not. It’s just an innocent conversation between two women who enjoy each other’s company and respect each other. Something I can’t say about Crowley. She thinks I forgot my warning all those months ago.”

“You know Crowley didn’t mean anything by that. She was just teasing me. It’s how our relationship functions.”

Anathema grinned, taking out her phone and typing a text. “Mhm. And this is how my relationship with Aziraphale functions. And— sent.” 

“Do you think Aziraphale will take it badly?” Newt asked, worrying that this might be overdoing it.

That pulled a chuckle from her as she came to sit on his lap. She always liked it when he placed little kisses along her jaw and neck. He breathed her in, drawing comfort from her just as much as she was drawing comfort from him.

“I don’t think so.”

“That doesn’t sound reassuring.”

“Aziraphale is a woman who knows what she wants, and that is Crowley.”

“Then why are you—”

“She also knows who Crowley is and what she’s capable of, so this won’t put a wrench in their relationship, don’t worry. That does not mean that Crowley shouldn’t be put back in her place. And I know that the blow — whatever that might entail — coming from me wouldn’t hurt as much as it would coming from Aziraphale.”

“Are you suggesting Aziraphale should punish her?”

Anathema laughed, head thrown back, and then planted a kiss on his lips. “Who knows, but thank you for suggesting that.”

“No, I didn’t mean it like that! Please don’t make me a part of— whatever it is you intend to do.”

She kissed his nose. “Don’t worry, I’ll leave your name out,” she said with glee as her phone pinged.

“So not reassuring.”

“Ah, there it is. My date with Aziraphale is confirmed!” She jumped off Newt’s lap, his hands trying to grab onto her and drag her back down.

“Can’t I persuade you to stay?”

She threw him a wide grin. “You could have. But I’m already at the door. See you later, mouse!”

He sighed and scrubbed his face in his palms. Well, there was nothing he could do now, so he better get back to wor— of course Anathema took the tape recorder with her. Well, it was still his downtime, so he shuffled off to their bed for some rest. He hoped Crowley wouldn’t take it to heart. It really wasn’t his fault.


	14. Reunions (Present)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we've finally reached the last half of the story where things will start to make more sense.

* * *

**Sydney Shatterdome, 1900 hours**

Marshal's office

***

“Absolutely out of the question.”

“What?” Crowley jumped out of her seat. “Did you hear a word we said?”

Marshal’s cool gaze would have made Gabriel flinch and sit his arse back down, but Crowley had been on the receiving end of that one too many times to have the same effect on her. Add to that Crowley’s lack of self-preservation, and Marshal not only had an impatient pilot on her hands, but also one who would argue with her until the cows came home.

“It’s our only option right now,” Anathema added, tone placating.

Marshal didn’t even look at her. “I already have one pilot out of commission. I am not going to risk a second one.”

Crowley growled in frustration, pacing away from the desk. This wasn’t happening. They were so close to finding out what happened to Aziraphale! 

“However, we can—” 

“Every moment,” Crowley interrupted Anathema, “we’re wasting arguing over this, is a moment in which Aziraphale fades away. We’ve already wasted almost half a year. I’m useless to you right now!”

“You are still a pilot on active duty.”

“And I have no fucking pilot to drift with because I’m trying to bring her back and you won’t let me!”

“We found someone who matches your compatibility results. Dr Sable is flying here from Texas as we speak.”

“Oh my god!” Crowley groaned. 

“Dr Raven Sable?” Anathema said, an odd quality to her voice. She sounded like she was trying to keep something at bay. “The author of  _ D-Plan Dieting: Slim Yourself Beautiful?”  _ Now she could hear it, the disdain and disgust. Crowley caught the minute nod Marshal gave her. “You cannot be seriously saying that he can drift now! He already did a lot of damage by convincing people that adding Kaiju blood in their diet would make them lose weight!”

“What he did with his time prior to testing is none of our concern,” she said, looking pointedly at Crowley.

“I’m not drifting. It’s Aziraphale or no one.”

“Ranger.” That managed to stop Crowley’s pacing. “You are a pilot first and foremost. Whether your pilot is on active duty or out of commission your duty is to be ready to intercept and kill any Kaiju that breaches the portal. No matter who your co-pilot is. Personal feelings have no say in this.”

Crowley strode to Marshal’s desk and placed her palms on the edge of it. It was the most reckless thing she’d done since coming there (if one didn’t count her accepting Aziraphale’s offer, that is). Aziraphale would’ve either been scandalized by this uncouth behavior or had her back. Probably a mix of both. This was her mother Crowley was arguing with, after all.

“I’m here because of her. My  _ duty  _ is first and foremost to her. Not you. Or this building. Or the world out there. She’s the one that saved me. Without her—”

“Ranger.” She raised her voice, a thunderous expression on her face. “If you disrespect me and this programme one more time you will be relieved of your responsibility permanently.”

Crowley drew in a sharp breath, unable to believe what Marshal was saying.

“She—” Crowley had to swallow and try to organize her thoughts. “She’s your daughter! We have a solution that could bring her back! Why—”

“Our priority right now is to find a replacement for you.”

“Have you no heart?!” Her voice broke over the last word. She was on the brink of breaking down herself and cry in frustration over this stupid situation.

Anathema jumped and gently pushed Crowley back by her arm, before addressing Marshal. “What she is trying to say is that we might discover what happened to Aziraphale if they were to drift again.”

Marshal twined her fingers on top of the folder. “Unless you can find the problem before that and guarantee that they will both return from it unscathed, then you two are prohibited from drifting.”

“Unbelievable!” Crowley threw up her arms even as Marshal was narrowing her eyes at her. She glared right back until Anathema bodily blocked the eye contact between them.

“We will find out what’s wrong with Aziraphale,” Anathema reassured.

“You have fourteen hours.”

Anathema nodded and dragged Crowley out of her office.

“Is she for real?” she couldn’t help growling.

“She is. You have to remember that she is the marshal to everyone here. If she let her feelings for her daughter cloud her judgement, where would we be? We need someone who can make these harsh decisions.”

“She has no heart!”

“On the contrary. It’s because she has too much of that that she’s this harsh.”

“Why are you taking her side?”

“I’ve been here for longer than you have. I know how things work here and what’s at stake for Marshal.”

“That doesn’t excuse her—”

Anathema rounded on her, stopping them in the middle of a busy corridor. “Promise me you won’t antagonize her any further.”

“What? Have you—”

“I understand both your sides. However, fighting over what’s the best course of action, no matter how solid your argument is, will not bring Aziraphale back. She is important to me, too, and I’ll do everything in my power to save her, but I cannot do that if I have to worry that you’ll do something reckless again and have yourself suspended. What she warned you about meant that you wouldn’t be able to step foot in this shatterdome or any other across the globe. How are you supposed to help me bring Aziraphale back if you can’t even be in the same room as her?”

“Uh…”

“Yeah.” Her voice was so calm and soft. It boggled Crowley that she could have this much focus in such a situation. But then again, Newt wasn’t in the situation Aziraphale was. “Now promise me.”

Crowley pressed her lips together, then sighed and glanced sideways. “Okay. I promise.”

Anathema nodded. “We all want Aziraphale back,” she reiterated as they continued their hurried walk down corridors and catwalks. “Marshal included. You have to remember that she loves her daughter as much as you do, and if she wasn’t in the position she’s in right now, she’d have moved mountains to save her.”

“But why is she so hellbent on finding me a pilot when we told her that we might be able to save her if we drift again?”

“Because between you and Aziraphale, you’re the one with a higher percentage of drift compatibility with someone else.”

“I don’t want to be,” she grumbled.

“You’ll have to. It’s true that Aziraphale brought you here, but just like her, you have a duty to the people working here and the world at large. You of all people know that fighting a Kaiju is not a walk in the park. Lives have been lost out there whether they were pilots or civilians.”

Crowley clicked her tongue, wanting to argue with that, but she knew that Anathema was right. She was also cooling down, so it was easier for her to see the perspective Anathema was talking about. She almost felt guilty for snapping at Marshal, but then again she talked about Aziraphale as if she was just another pilot. 

“I’ll be diplomatic with her.”

Anathema snorted a laugh. “That might be a tall order for you.”

“Hey! Didn’t you say that I should—”

“Yes, but let’s not kid ourselves. You’re both stubborn women and Aziraphale is unable to act as a buffer. Just try to remember that she’s not actively hostile towards you or us bringing Aziraphale back when you two will be in the same room.”

“Okay,” she said begrudgingly. 


	15. Taking over (Past)

**Sydeny Shatterdome, 2200 hours**

Their bathroom

***

“She's unresponsive. Fixed pupils. Get her on that IV, stat! Where's the gurney? We need to get her to IC _now.”_

“En route. ETA one minute.”

“Keep pressing on that wound, Jeff.” Then, under his breath, “hurry up with the gurney, dammit!”

“Is she— will—”

He turned to the only other occupant of the room besides the unconscious person and his colleague. "She'll be fine. Now please move.”

***

**76 hours before**

“I’m knackered!” Crowley sighed and slouched in her seat as they waited for the brain scans and physical checkup results to be ready.

“Just a little bit more, my dear, and we’ll retreat to our room.”

Even as Crowley kept her eyes close and her head leaned back over the top of her chair, she squeezed their entwined hands and smiled.

“Thought living the apocalypse days meant less paperwork.”

Aziraphale huffed a soft laugh, thumb stroking Crowley’s. “These are not the end times.”

“The Kaiju we fought five hours ago fooled me then.”

Aziraphale squeezed her hand again. “That— we need to find out how that was possible.”

Crowley hoisted herself up, though she still slouched, but this time into her angel. Her shoulder was always so inviting, so her head found its way there easily.

“We told them everything we saw,” Crowley said. “In the littlest details. Hope I won’t have to revisit that any time soon.”

“But it’s not possible to— it’s—”

“Fucking alien, is what it was.”

“It— it _talked_ to us.”

Crowley shook her head. “No. That was just— garbled noises.”

“But how could it use our frequency? I thought only Jaegers and Loccent Command had access to it.”

“They’re looking into it, angel. They have the transmission recorded and will get whoever’s good at this stuff to debug it or whatever they do to find out what it tried to communicate to us.”

Aziraphale shivered. “It’s one thing to fight a Kaiju that only screeches and growls. But this— this is something out of the most nightmarish night terror I have ever seen.”

“Yeah, and close to New Zealand which is a weird place to be compared to all the other attacks,” Crowley said. “I’m looking so much forward to a shower. Need to wash the day away.”

Aziraphale pressed a kiss into her hair. “Want company?”

“If you’re not opposed to washing my back, sure.” Her angel jostled her and she cackled, then nuzzled into her neck, hugging Aziraphale’s arm. “How’s the wound?”

She lifted her other hand, the dominant one, where a finger-long cut slashed Aziraphale’s forearm almost in the middle.

“Nothing to worry about. It doesn’t even hurt.”

“Maybe next time you shouldn’t leave the cockpit and try your hand at being an engineer.”

Aziraphale shifted and by the way she lifted her chin just a bit, Crowley knew she was doing a veritable impression of a prim lady offended by an odour that had no place being there.

“I spend enough time with Newt to know a bit about what various cables inside the Jaeger do and how to patch them up temporarily.”

Crowley hummed, the smile hard to temper. “Are we conveniently forgetting that you also worked in Jaeger Engineering for four months?”

“I made a mess of things. Poor Newt. He was too kind to tell me to bugger off.”

Crowley snorted. “You’re better fit soaring into the sky.”

“Soaring? Our Jaegers don’t fly, dear.”

“But we do, angel. We always do. Up here.” She tapped Aziraphale’s forehead and Aziraphale brought their twined hands up and kissed the back of Crowley’s.

“You’re right. We keep each other floating safely within the space our minds share. You’re always there to catch me if I fall.”

“You never fall, angel. You never do. It’s me that keeps falling.”

Her other hand came up to caress Crowley’s cheek and she closed her unprotected eyes, relishing the warm feeling of her angel’s fingers.

“That’s not true, my dear. You chased the R.A.B.I.T. in the early drifts, but not for a while now.”

“You’re good at keeping me from toppling over the edge, ‘s all.”

Aziraphale placed a tender kiss on top of Crowley’s messy hair.

“Nonsense, dear girl. You learned to trust yourself and trust me by extension. That is where your resilience comes from. You’ve become mentally stronger.”

Crowley huffed. “I just need to get physically stronger, too, so I can pick you up and have my wicked way with you.”

Aziraphale’s giggles almost dislodged Crowley’s head.

“Against the nearest wall,” Crowley added around her grin.

“But you don’t need to pick me up to slam me into a wall and have, as you so eloquently put it, your wicked way with me.”

Crowley shifted her legs and pushed her nose into Aziraphale’s neck. “Angel, we’re in a public ssspace,” she murmured heatedly.

“You’re the one who started it.”

“And you’re happy to finish it.”

“Always.” She whispered that against the back of Crowley’s hand.

***

The brain scan results come back clean, as did their physical test aptitudes. They didn’t hear anything back from the debriefing, but they supposed it was because they still didn’t know why they found the Kaiju near New Zealand when all the previous attacks had moved either towards Sydney or Hong Kong in those parts. If anything came up, both Aziraphale and Crowley were sure they’d be among the first to be alerted.

***

**75 hours before**

Even before she fully closed the heavy steel door, her angel was halfway out of her black undersuit, the sleeves hanging limply around her hips while she stretched her arms above her head, two satisfying cracks resounding in the silence of their room. There was only the desk lamp suffusing the place (and her angel) in an orange glow. Her black sports bra dipped along her back and shoulders, making shadows shift and Crowley’s mouth went dry.

She was there, plastered along her angel’s back, nosing into her neck. The smell of latex was rather strong where it rubbed on her skin, but she forgot all about it when Aziraphale hummed and leaned back into Crowley’s front.

“Yes, my dear,” she said, a playful lilt to her voice as one hand buried into Crowley’s frizzy hair and the other covered Crowley’s hand on her stomach. “Is there anything you want to tell me?”

“Mm, missed you.”

She giggled. “We’ve been in each other’s heads not long ago.”

“Missed you like this,” she elaborated, words pressed into her skin.

“I must smell of sweat and chemicals from the suit.” She managed to turn into Crowley’s arms and kiss her nose which was enough to distract Crowley as her angel moved away. “Weren’t we showering—” But Crowley slammed her bodily into the nearest wall, kissing her heatedly.

“Oh, okay,” Aziraphale murmured, breathing hard when Crowley relented. “Someone requires particular attention.”

Her hands splayed over Crowley’s neck and jaw, and drew her in for another long kiss. Crowley felt weak in her knees as one of Aziraphale’s hands grabbed Crowley’s ass through the suit and pulled her in even more. The feeling of that strong arm flexing along her side and back had her moan into the kiss and almost melt into Aziraphale’s welcoming arms.

But she had an agenda tonight!

It was hard to stop a kiss when one’s angel wanted to devour you, but through a stroke of luck she managed to lean back.

Spit-shiny, kiss-swollen lips tempted her and resisting plunging in again was physically painful.

Aziraphale flexed her arms, wanting to draw her in again, but Crowley had the presence of mind to put her hands on top of Aziraphale’s shoulders and keep her there.

“What—”

“I have a plan, angel!”

Aziraphale giggled. “The fact that you’re so determined to see this plan through makes me want to ruin it.”

“Please don’t,” she said weakly. She wouldn’t be able to resist if Aziraphale pushed.

“You’re adorable, darling.” She didn’t move. The threat passed. “So what did you have in mind? I thought you said you were knackered.”

“Uh— I was. Debriefing and brain scans make me tired.”

“So now you’re full of energy.”

Crowley grinned and pushed Aziraphale into the desk, then pushed some more until Aziraphale’s arse was seated on top of it. 

“Oh,” she smiled, “this is looking interesting. Are we going to make ample use of such hardy piece of furniture.”

The glint of mischief and amusement in her eyes made Crowley snort. “Angel,” she said against her lips, making herself comfortable between her angel’s thighs, “shut up and enjoy this.”

Hunger hung heavy within Aziraphale’s eyes at that and Crowley kissed her hard enough to make her moan.

Hands dragged at Aziraphale’s bra all the way to her elbow. She caught onto what Crowley wanted to do and slipped her arm free of the strap. So Crowley slowly made her way down, fingers pushing down the thin cup to free one breast. She sucked the nipple, covering her teeth behind her lips to worry at it as the tip of her tongue laved the nub maddeningly.

Aziraphale gasped and undulated her body against Crowley, her strong thighs coming to embrace Crowley’s hips and draw her in even more.

“Dar—ling!”

One hand was helping Aziraphale keep her balance on their shared desk in the face of Crowley’s intense assault while the other one was scratching randomly at her scalp, making Crowley moan around her nub.

And because Crowley knew that if she kept doing this Aziraphale would get impatient and switch their roles, Crowley shimmied one hand inside her angel’s suit pants, finding her knickers slightly wet. Without missing a beat, she began rubbing her clit until she found a rhythm that had Aziraphale spew her assent both bodily, in the way her arms and hands gathered Crowley close, but also verbally.

Between her mouth and her finger, Aziraphale came within a minute.

“I’m not done,” Crowley said against Aziraphale’s lips. “Help me a bit.” She pulled at Aziraphale’s suit until she used her hands to lift her body enough for Crowley to get rid of the garment. “Now,” she knelt between her legs, biting her lower lip when Aziraphale’s thighs came willingly on her shoulders. “God, I love your thighs!” she couldn’t help but whisper, teeth scraping along the inside of one.

“Mm, and I love the sight of you between them, my dear,” Aziraphale said, her cheeks flushed and gaze hungry.

If Crowley didn’t act quickly, she was in danger of being devoured by her angel before she got to do that herself.

So she leaned forward, still looking up at her angel and licked the patch of wetness that her knickers soaked up. Aziraphale shivered slightly which encouraged Crowley to push against it with her tongue, letting the muscle convulse on top of Aziraphale’s clit. But it wasn’t enough for Crowley, so with the help of her fingers, she pushed aside Aziraphale’s knickers and finally tasted her come.

“Oh, _oh my!_ Crowley, dear, I’m afraid you’ll have to bring the chairs closer otherwise I don’t think I’ll be able to control myself.”

Crowley lifted an eyebrow and Aziraphale’s thighs squeezed her tightly enough that she gasped, her own fingers digging into Aziraphale’s thighs.

 _“Fuck,”_ she groaned, needing to press her palm over her own pulsing clit to stop herself from coming so soon.

Aziraphale’s dark eyes made her look as if she contemplated having Crowley spread on the bed, kneel above her and let Crowley have the most luscious meal she could ask for which _fuckyesplease!_

But Crowley, once again, moved quickly and dragged the chairs, one on each side so Aziraphale could have some stability. Or rather, so she could open her legs even more. Crowley felt intoxicated and dizzy at the debauched sight her angel made.

“It’s all yours, my love,” she murmured enticingly.

Crowley had no idea what she did to deserve this, but she also had no brain power to find out because she was pure instinct in this moment, pure want ramped up to eleven. She buried her face against Aziraphale, tasting and sucking, thrusting her tongue inside her angel, time and again, and letting herself be guided by the gasps and hums and encouragement as she brought her angel to a second orgasm.

She lapped until Aziraphale couldn’t take it anymore and pushed her gently away.

“That was— you always spoil me, my dear,” she said lovingly, her hand cupping Crowley’s cheek, thumb caressing her lower lip. 

She seemed to regain her mental faculties in record time because next Crowley knew was that she was dragged into bed by an angel who looked exactly like a woman who was going to have her wicked way with Crowley.

And Crowley would let her.

_(Yesohgodyespleassse!)_

Only Aziraphale guided Crowley on top of her and it took a while for Crowley’s sex-addled brain to understand what her angel was urging her to do. But when she did, she had to bury her face into Aziraphale’s breasts because otherwise she was going to come right there on the spot.

“You realize I’m gonna come the moment you touch me, right?” Crowley mumbled into Aziraphale’s left breast. She caught a bit of it between her lips.

Aziraphale’s hands were roaming over her body, doing a good job at unzipping and pushing Crowley’s own undersuit off her shoulders.

“Well, we’ll need to get you out of this thing first, so I think that’s enough respite for you to resist.”

“With you? Resist?” Crowley pushed herself up on her knees and let Aziraphale take her suit off. “Have you met me, angel?”

Aziraphale giggled and Crowley smiled softly at this flushed, innocent-looking being, even though Aziraphale always proved to her that she was many things but not innocent.

Case in point, she was guided swiftly to kneel above her head.

“Angel, are you sure? I might—”

“I’m keeping my hands on your thighs. If it gets too much, I’ll push.”

Crowley gazed down at her for a long moment, then nodded. Slowly, she widened her knees and let Aziraphale guide her. Heat was coming off her angel’s upper body to warm her bum and thighs, not to mention the hot palms supporting and directing her, as well as the warm puffs of breath. The moment her angel’s tongue flickered out to taste her wet vulva, she almost buckled off the bed, but Aziraphale’s short nails dug into her thighs and that, more than anything, had Crowley arch and thrust forward. Which wasn’t bad.

It was— so overwhelmingly _good_. 

Aziraphale hummed, the vibrations making Crowley gasp as her hips thrusted again of their own accord. Then her angel started sucking her, thrusting her tongue inside, sometimes moving up to tease her clit. It was an uncoordinated, unpredictable thing and Crowley soon was trembling above her angel, unable to think or grasp any thought. And Aziraphale was encouraging Crowley to press down more, greedy lips and tongue teasing in suckling motions and _oh, oh God it’s too much too good too soon_ — 

Crowley came with a silent cry, her entire body convulsing as Aziraphale’s tongue lapped at her clit drawing everything out of Crowley until Crowley had nothing left to give to her angel. She collapsed at Aziraphale’s side.

They lay like that for a while, just breathing, then Aziraphale got them two damp towels to clean themselves and fell asleep in each other’s arms.

***

**68 hours before**

“Oh! Today we have bacon. What do you say about mash with bacon and a side of mushrooms with white sauce?”

“That sounds lovely, dear, but I’ll just go for a cup of tea.”

Crowley did a double take. “Say that again?”

Aziraphale side-stepped a befuddled Crowley as she stared at her. She ordered her tea and made her way towards a free table pushed to the far side of the War Clock.

Crowley joined her a minute later, her tray containing two portions of bacon and mashed potatoes. No mushrooms. She was never a fan of them.

“Okay, what’s wrong?” Crowley asked, pushing the tray in the middle of the table between them.

“Nothing is wrong.” Aziraphale sipped from her tea with a calm that began to irk Crowley. There was something there and she wanted to find out.

“Something _is_ wrong. You always pack your meal and half of mine after a Kaiju fight. You’re ravenous, angel. In more ways than one.”

Aziraphale smiled. “Perhaps I took my fill last night.”

Crowley narrowed her eyes, even as she felt her a pang in the pit of her stomach and her cheeks warm a bit. “No. That’s not enough.”

“Are you telling me that I’m insatiable, dear?”

“Yes, you are. And I love you for it. So tell me what’s wrong? Is your stomach upset? Did you catch a stomach bug or something?” She leaned over and pressed the back of her hand under Aziraphale’s bangs. “You don’t have a fever, but it could be internal. Doctor Tracy would—”

“Crowley, I’m fine. I simply don’t feel hungry. Now, let’s concentrate on the duties we have today.”

Crowley stared at her for a little while, but Aziraphale was never intimidated by that, so she allowed her to change the subject.

“Training the new recruits.”

Aziraphale nodded. 

“Zuigiber sent me a text message this morning with only laughing emojis. She’s enjoying this far too much. I told Marshal that we’re not suited for this, but she didn’t want to hear it. We’re pilots for fuck’s sake.”

“With eleven kills under our belt.”

Crowley snorted. “That doesn’t mean we’re A+ trainers.”

“I’m sure Adam and Warlock will be the most drift compatible,” Aziraphale changed the subject. “Adam and Pepper are a close second.”

Crowley allowed the change, knowing that she’d only manage to get her blood pressure through the roof, going in circles. “I have my doubts about Wensleydale and Brian. Their scores seem to go from bad to worse by the day.”

“Well, if you kept from putting the fear of Crowley in them, perhaps their results would improve.”

Crowley scoffed and stabbed a piece of bacon, cracking in half instantly. She picked one half and ate it.

“Not like you have a better time. What did they do during your last meditation lesson?”

Aziraphale sipped her tea, her nose twitching. Crowley took another piece of bacon to hide the smile. “They have some trouble concentrating. But it’s only been a week and a half since they came here. They’ll get around, I’m sure.”

“Or they’ll muck up their preliminary test. No way will I allow them to do the drift-test if they don’t pass both our training.”

“Oh! I know! Perhaps we should do a joint class!”

Crowley took another piece of bacon and scooped a bit of mashed potatoes with it. She was much better at eating regularly now than she’d been two years ago, but sometimes she still picked at her food. Usually Aziraphale would share the meal with her to tempt her to eat, and it worked more often than not, although seeing her angel enjoy the food was in itself an _experience._

But she wasn’t joining her now, even though she was using the same tactic.

“What for?” Crowley asked.

“I was thinking that perhaps we are going about training them the wrong way.”

“Wrong way? What’s the right way, then? I don’t remember having any stable instruction when I started. It was mostly you and me and sometimes Zuigiberg grilling us around the ‘dome with her inhuman drills.”

“That’s the point, Crowley.” Her eyes were shining. “There _is_ no right or wrong way of doing it. We can try every path we can think of! After all, the human brain is so diverse and extraordinary that no one technique works with everybody.”

“But all five were recruited for the pilot programme.”

“Yes, but that doesn’t mean that all five of them _will_ become pilots. They all had scores high enough to be warranted a possible place in the programme, but the tests are not infallible. More tests are needed to determine if they’re really pilot material.”

“Harsh, angel. They all think they’ll be piloting a Jaeger once they finish with us.”

“Then perhaps we should get them used to the idea that they could pursue other avenues within the shatterdome.”

Crowley lifted an eyebrow. “That’s why you want a joint training?”

“We could devise different kinds of tests that allow them to go beyond that of a pilot’s training. This way they might realize that piloting a Jaeger is not what they really want to do and that they’re better at something else.”

Crowley’s thumb pressed against her chin. “Not bad, angel.”

There was a fire burning wildly in her eyes, cheeks flushed with excitement, and Crowley wanted to kiss her right there and then.

“Shall we start today?”

Grinning, Crowley stood up and gestured with her open palm. “After you, m’lady.” 

Aziraphale didn’t touch food the entire day. Crowley didn’t notice, there were too many things happening.

***

**61 hours before**

There was something amiss with her angel. It became increasingly evident as the day progressed.

“I’m pretty sure that is what I said,” Aziraphale snapped, making it clear that there was no doubt that _was_ exactly what she said.

Definitely something wrong.

And it wasn’t because that was the first time Aziraphale ever got cross with Crowley, but because that change in behaviour happened so fast that Crowley was still reeling from the whiplash.

“No,” Crowley soldiered on, “you told Newt that the piece that engages the knuckle rockets was there not two minutes ago.”

It happened while Aziraphale had been talking to Newt, who was now looking between the two of them as if he was two seconds away from pinching himself. Crowley wanted to join him, but Aziraphale’s frown and building ire was directed towards her now, so she couldn’t get distracted just yet.

“That is not true.”

“Uh,” Newt intervened, somewhat awkwardly, “she is right, Aziraphale. You told me—”

“Why are you so adamant in putting words in my mouth?” Aziraphale snapped again.

That made Crowley’s eyebrows lift. “Angel, are you okay?”

“I’m tickety-boo. What I don’t understand is why we’re having this conversation. The piece is—” She frowned at the tray with other pieces that were ready to be transported to the mechanics working tirelessly to keep the Jaegers in top fighting condition. The piece she had been talking about wasn’t there.

Crowley stepped forward, trying to catch her gaze, a hand cupping her pale cheek. “Let’s go see Anathema.”

It was a testament to how weirded out Aziraphale was by the situation that she didn’t resist as Crowley guided her gently out of Newt’s little office. She threw a questioning frown at Newt over her shoulder, but the man only shrugged helplessly and shook his head. 

***

Anathema’s scans didn’t find anything wrong with Aziraphale’s brain and by the time they got back to their room, Aziraphale wouldn’t stop apologizing for snapping at her, no matter how many times Crowley waved it away.

She got to fall asleep enveloped in her angel’s arms, so everything was forgotten just as fast. The training of the new recruits had been taking a toll on both of them, so they took every minute of sleep they could. 

***

**45 hours before**

Over the next two days, Aziraphale seemed to get worse and worse. No amount of blood and saliva tests, physical checkups and brain scans, managed to solve the mystery that was Aziraphale’s sudden shortness of breath or heart palpitations or temporary memory loss.

Crowley felt as disoriented and unsettled as Aziraphale and she couldn’t help but feel as if there was a wall building up between them.

Case in point, the next evening Crowley invited Aziraphale to their bed, prepared to draw and offer comfort, but Aziraphale brushed off the offer with a simple ‘will be back later’.

She didn’t come back later. Crowley fell asleep long after midnight and when she was woken up by the phone alarm at six sharp, there was no sign that Aziraphale even returned during the night.

There was no trace of her for the whole morning. None of the usual places in which she could be found before, not even the people Aziraphale usually interacted with saw her. It was as if her angel disappeared into thin air. One of the mechanics suggested that she might have taken a stroll along the beach, but the beach was deserted at high noon. It was a restricted area, after all.

She couldn’t find Aziraphale anywhere and she had to train the new recruits, even without Aziraphale by her side.

***

**30 hours before**

When she returned to their room, late in the evening, to take a shower and then go talk to Marshal about organizing a search party or something, Aziraphale was there.

“Hello, my dear.”

Correction: the Aziraphale she knew was there.

Crowley didn’t even pretend to feel anything but a deep relief as she took her angel in her arms.

“Oh, oh dear. Did something happen?” She returned the hug and kissed her hair.

“Where were you?” Crowley muttered petulantly into her neck as she breathed Aziraphale in.

She had no idea she could miss her that much. It felt— it felt like a torn limb. Her mind continuously did the knee-jerk reaction of searching, latching, grasping for Aziraphale. 

“Ah, well, here and there. I went on an errand into the city.”

Crowley pulled back to look at her. “But you nev— why didn’t you let me know? You’ve been gone the whole night, too.”

Aziraphale broke the eye contact, but then she pressed another kiss, this time on the corner of her mouth. “Something I had to do.”

“Was it Marshal? Did she put you to it?”

Aziraphale hummed noncommittally, her fingers brushing lint or whatever she saw off her shoulder. Crowley searched her face, feeling as if the thread was right in front of her but she couldn’t pull on it so that the whole weird situation she was in would unspool.

But Aziraphale was smiling serenely at her and after a few more thought wrestling, she let it go. Aziraphale was in her arms, whole and unharmed _and_ she was herself. She couldn’t bring herself to look a gifted horse in the mouth. Aziraphale meant too much to her to have that kind of courage.

“As long as you’re fine— you are, right? You didn’t get into any trouble while I wasn’t there to back you up, did you?”

Aziraphale giggled and placed a close-mouthed kiss on her lips. “Don’t be silly, dear girl. Nothing that exciting happened.”

Crowley followed her mouth, placing a longer kiss against her angel’s lips which Aziraphale returned and before Crowley realized it, she was laid on the bed, a hungry angel between her legs trying and succeeding in melting her brain.

In hindsight, she knew deep down that it would backfire in her face. But she had always been a selfish person, happier to take what was dangled in front of her than to take a step back and analyze the situation. But she would regret until the day she died not being more suspicious, letting herself be comforted by the false security the first, good thing that happened in her life gave her.

***

**15 minutes before**

“I’m beat.” Crowley let herself fall into their bed as Aziraphale was taking off her clothes to take a shower.

“Today has been quite a day. Wensleydale and Brian showed us that they could be pilots someday soon.”

Crowley’s forearm was covering her eyes. “Not unless they pass the physical.”

“Oh, Crowley, you won’t be too harsh on them, will you?”

She snorted. “It’s for their own good. Adam, Warlock, and Pepper have aced every test we threw at them. And their team work is incredible; when one lags behind, the other two give the boost needed.” She grinned. “Pepper even argued with me on the comment I made at Adam being too attached to Warlock. I like her.”

“Of course you do,” Aziraphale said, muffled as she took off her tee. “There is no doubt that you see yourself in her.”

Crowley snorted. “Her spunk is good for the kind of authority here.”

“You mean, you’re happy to have found your legacy.”

She hummed, not agreeing, nor disagreeing with that notion. But she did entertain the thought of one day Pepper arguing with Marshal and Marshal cursing the day she met Crowley. Served her right.

Never mind that Crowley had never been good with authoritative figures.

“Brian and his partner-in-crime,” she continued, “need to get used to being under pressure because they’ll have to make some harsh decisions out there.”

When Aziraphale next spoke, she was turning on the shower and her voice echoed a bit. “But not by terrorizing them.”

“‘S what I live for, angel,” she called out before she heard the arhythmic fall of water, signaling that Aziraphale was soaking her hair up. She sat up and massaged the bridge of her nose. “Terrorizing kids, big fan me,” she muttered to herself with a snort.

She lazed around for five more minutes, trying to will herself to get up, then took off her tee as she entered the bathroom, intent on taking a shower, too. Aziraphale was drying her hair, thin kimono-like bathrobe barely touching her knees.

Crowley took a detour and snogged a surprised Aziraphale because no matter how many times Crowley saw her in various states of undress, she always got Crowley’s blood singing.

“Well, what was that for, my dear?”

She licked her lips as she grinned back at a flushed angel. “Can’t help myself. You’re a walking temptation.”

The smile turned wicked as she grabbed a hold of Crowley’s hips, when she tried to step aside, and pulled her in.

“I disagree,” she murmured, eyes on her lips, and Crowley shivered because Aziraphale could still surprise her with how much she hungered for her.

It was still hard for Crowley to believe that someone as amazing and gorgeous as Aziraphale would look with the same kind of naked hunger at her that Crowley looked at Aziraphale.

“As much as I’d love a thorough shag against one of these walls, I don’t think I have it in me.”

Aziraphale’s breath and lips tickled her ear. “What if I savoured you in our bed?”

Crowley bit her lower lip, pressing her body against her angel. “If you don’t mind me falling asleep in the middle…”

“Well, that just means that I’ll have to try hard to keep you awake.” She chuckled and side-stepped Crowley to go out of the bathroom.

But Crowley took only two steps before she heard a nasty thud. 

“Aziraphale!”

She was on her knees in an instant, turning her angel on her back. Blood was oozing sluggishly from her temple and a nasty bruise was blooming up on her cheekbone. She sprang up and called Anathema, gaze not leaving her angel for a moment.


	16. The help (Present)

**Sydeny Shatterdome, 0100 hours**

Anathema's and Newt's room

***

Anathema was worrying the chewy end of her pen as she pored over the physical slices and the ones on her laptop. She had lost count of how long she’d been there trying to figure out what she was missing. She even rewatched the video interrogation, desperate for clues, but apart from feeling like slime was sliding down her back every time she looked at not-Aziraphale, she couldn’t figure out anything amiss.

Newt came out of the bathroom yawning, wearing a pair of deep red pyjama bottoms and a tee. He’d returned from his job just ten minutes ago. Anathema sighed when he hugged her from behind, placing his cheek on top of her head. She pulled at his arm until he got the idea and came round to sit on her lap. Sighing again, she let the weight and warmth of her boyfriend calm her frazzled mind.

“Anything?”

She hummed noncommittally and he kissed her temple, palms stroking her back and arm.

“I’m this close to giving up,” Anathema murmured, feeling at her wit’s ends. She didn’t know what else she could do. 

“Oh, that nasty.” She hummed again, and he placed little kisses on her forehead absentmindedly. “I could help.” Another hum. “I mean, two pairs of eyes is better than one, right?”

She snorted. “Yeah, I heard that before.” Her hand fluttered under his arm. “Help yourself. I’m not sure what you could see that I didn’t already. I swear my dreams consist only of brain scans lately. I could draw each one from memory.”

He nuzzled her until she lifted her head and he placed soft kisses on her lips. “You’re awesome like that.”

She smiled tiredly. “Flatterer.”

He turned enough to take a few of the scans and studied them with the same intense focus that he reserved for the Jaeger blueprints. Wildly, she wondered how she got this lucky. Having a man at her side that not only respected her and her work, but was also patient and understanding, was something that, for all intents and purposes, shouldn’t have existed. 

“Are these in order?”

“No, the ones in physical format are old. There’s the ones from Aziraphale and Crowley’s first three drifts, the ones after their last mission, and their separate drift compatibility test. Aziraphale’s is the oldest because she took that test when she was 18. The scans from when they drifted after Aziraphale woke up from the coma are on my laptop.”

Newt hummed, turning slice after slice one-handed, sometimes looking over the two scans displayed on her laptop. The repetitive sounds and Newt’s calm breathing lulled her into dozing off.

“Huh.” His voice rose her up and she blinked sleepily against the glow of the desk lamp. She hummed a question. “There’s something… do you have Aziraphale’s brain scans before their last mission?”

“Uh, yeah. I should have them on my laptop. Here.” Newt stood up so that Anathema could get the feeling back into her legs and pulled the other chair next to her.

When she pulled that scan up side-by-side with Aziraphale’s after-coma scan, she noticed no outright differences. Then Newt placed the physical scan of Aziraphale right after she came back from their mission and Anathema’s still sleep-addled brain was trying hard to find anything in them that she hadn’t seen already.

In front of her there were two images in digital format: Aziraphale’s after-mission and after-coma scans, and Newt had the physical slice of Aziraphale’s brain before the last mission to the left of the computer screen.

“Do you see it?”

“See what?”

“This region here,” his index finger circled the hypothalamus region on the physical scan. She frowned, her own mind coming back online. “Now look at the other two.”

“There’s— there’s— what’s that?” She leaned forward, eyes flying from the physical slice to the digital ones.

“You can barely see it what with the surrounding shapes of the brain, but— there’s a— a deformation there that’s not in the pre-mission scan.”

Anathema stared at her laptop, the shape clearer now more than ever. How could she have missed that? She sifted through the physical scans and placed them, one after the other, side-by-side with the digital ones, and the difference was there, more pronounced with each one she put up for comparison.

“How did you—”

“See that?” There was definitely an amused undertone to his voice, but Anathema was too busy staring at the images to spare him a glare. “I notice differences for a living, mouse.” 

“I need to see Marshal.” She scrambled to put the scans back together in the folder and closed her laptop so she could transport everything with her.

“Is that a tumor, do you think?”

Anathema grabbed the edge of the door, feeling as crazed as she probably looked.

“No, that’s impossible. It’d have shown in the previous scans. One doesn’t develop a brain tumor overnight.”

“But she did fall, didn’t she? She had a concussion. That could be a— a blood clot or something like that. Damaged—”

“Mouse, all that would’ve shown on the periphery of the brain, not in the middle. Not exactly where the hypothalamus is. This is not natural and we need to find out what it is.”

With that, she headed towards Marshal’s office at a fast pace. 


	17. Isolation (Past)

**Sydney Shatterdome, 0800 hours**

Five months ago

Marshal's office

***

“We’ll be putting her in isolation until we understand what is happening with her. I thought I’d let you know first.”

“What does that imply?”

Marshal didn’t even blink as she relayed the information. “For the next few weeks she will be closely monitored by a dedicated team of doctors and scientists to determine what is happening to her.”

“So they’ll experiment on her.”

Her face didn’t change, her hands cupping each other over the folder on her desk. “They will do what is necessary to bring her back to us.”

“You told me you’d take care of her,” Crowley said, eyes cold and dead set on Marshal’s from her sprawl in the chair. “And you’re doing that by isolating her? She needs to have contact with people! Not be prodded—”

“She injured Gabriel and sent Michael to IC two days ago. Yes, I am isolating her.”

Crowley seethed in her seat; it still stung that they tried to see if Aziraphale was compatible with  _ Michael  _ of all people, after she and her angel kept scoring a zero flat. “She would never do that!”

“That’s why she stays in isolation until we figure out what’s happening to her.”

“You can’t do that to her,” she said quietly, feeling her eyebrows pressing against the upper rim of her shades. “I don’t agree to this!”

“I can and I will. She has become a threat to everyone here, including you. I’m doing you a courtesy by telling you first hand because I know how much you mean to her.  _ Do not  _ think for a second that you’re here because I need your permission.”

“She’s your daughter, how can you—” 

“I will not let her put into jeopardy the lives of every pilot in this Shatterdome, daughter or not.” Pause, both of them assessing each other like two calm beasts ready to flay into the other at a moment’s notice. “She wouldn’t want that, either.”

That mollified Crowley enough for her to melt into the chair and sigh. “I hate this,” she said quietly, grudgingly. “Why her?”  _ Why not me? _ she thought fervently.

“We’ll find out.”

It was a promise, dark and thick, and a threat towards whatever took Crowley’s angel. She nodded in much felt agreement. They would find out, and if it would be anything Crowley could set her fist through, she would. Without hesitation.

That gave Crowley an idea.

“I could drift with her again.” 

“And suffer the same consequences as Michael? Out of the question.”

“No.” She jumped forward in her seat. “No, that’s not it. We only drifted that one time after she woke up and behaved— unlike herself. To see if we could find anything, but she didn’t let me in.”

“What makes you think she will this time?”

“Because she won’t expect us to drift again. We know that Michael and Aziraphale have never been compatible. Add to that Aziraphale’s current condition and you have a recipe for disaster. ”

Marshal was taking all that in, Crowley could see it in her eyes, calculating, eliminating options.

“Think about it,” Crowley pushed it, feeling the small leeway Marshal was giving her by not shutting the idea down off the bat, “I have the most compatibility with her. I’d be able to reach her. We’re on equal footing there.” She waited, heart in her throat. “It’s worth a shot.”

“Very well.”

Crowley shot out of the chair and was out of the office like a bullet, giddiness and hope fighting to break free of her rib cage.

***

The drift was an utter failure.

The only thing that warm wall told her was that Aziraphale didn’t want her in, that she had lost the privilege to her mind, and that hurt more than she could have ever imagined.


	18. Interrogation

***

She was slouching in her aluminium seat. 

That was the first wrong thing Crowley saw when the video recording started.

Her angel never slouched. She always tried to keep a good posture unless she was reading in bed. But that, the person sitting there was sprawled as if she needed a second chair to keep herself from falling to the right, one hand slung nonchalantly over the back of her chair, was  _ not her angel _ .

_ “This conversation will be recorded. Do you consent to that?” _

All at once her posture changed, from the lazy sprawl to something more like Aziraphale as if she remembered to pull all her limbs back together. She played nervously with her hands on top of the table.

_ “I— I think that is the better option.” _

_ “There are no consequences if you refuse, but— we need… you need to talk to us, Aziraphale. Something is hap— has happened to you since the last battle and we need to find out what. So do you consent to have our conversation recorded?” _

_ “Oh, in that case, well— what is the correct response to this—” _

Crowley frowned. Anathema had been quite clear about why there was a need for the recording. So why was Aziraphale— 

_ “There is no correct way of doing this. You either consent or don’t.” _

Her hands fretted in her lap, gaze skittering across the room before settling back on Anathema.

_ “But what if the people who shackled me come back to— to do something else more horrible?”  _ There was a wet sheen in her eyes and Crowley gripped the display harder.

_ “Nobody will harm you here. This is for your own protection.” _

_ “Isn’t that what everyone says in this situation?”  _ The sheen was building up.  _ “The captor to the victim? Will I be prodded with needles? Lobotomized? What about the electro shocks? Will I be tor—” _

Crowley had to pause the video and just breathe. The distress on her angel’s face was getting to her. Her head duly hit the metal shelf at her back and she closed her eyes. Distantly, she thought that the interrogation must have been harder on Anathema than Crowley watching it, but she still couldn’t summon the will to empathise with Anathema. Between the two of them, Anathema was the professional and the one more prepared to reign in her emotions.

If Crowley would have been there— 

She didn’t know what she’d have done, but something stupid for sure.

With another fortifying breath and a gaze to the pager that Tendo gave to her to keep an eye on the cameras in the corridor, she skipped forward a minute or so in the recording.

_ “—your name, rank and job description for the record,”  _ said Anathema’s calm voice.

_ “Ah, well, don’t you have that written somewhere?” _

_ “Please cooperate. You gave your consent to this, remember?” _

Aziraphale wringed her fingers some more, eyes shifty, but then she sighed softly.  _ “Aziraphale Fell. Ranger and pilot of the Jaeger Zephyrus Anemoi, a Mark VI Jaeger made after the Mark III. Analogue.” _

_ “What happened two days ago?” _

_ “Beg your pardon?” _

_ “The incident with the neural handshake test.” _

_ “Oh.” _

That was the only thing she said as she seemed to turn her attention inward, face going blank and gaze distant.

_ “Well, nothing much. It’s water under the bridge already.” _

Papers rustled.  _ “You put Michael in a coma—” _

_ “Oh dear, poor girl. How is she?” _

Anathema took a few seconds to get her bearings. Crowley knew how she felt. The earnestness and worry on Aziraphale’s face was so genuine that Crowley’s own brain had a hard time remembering why they locked her up.

_ “She’s fine. She woke up last night.” _

Aziraphale’s expression shuttered off in the blink of an eye.

_ “Oh, well. Next time I’ll try harder.” _

_ “What do you mean?” _

Aziraphale leaned forward, her forearms on the metal table.

_ “You see, the issue with the technology you’re using is that it allows other people inside your head. One cannot control the Jaeger alone.” _

_ “That has been the way of things for decades now.” _

_ “Weak.” _

_ “You never had trouble with that.” _

She was as still as a mountain, and her gaze was so icy— no, it was dead. She was staring right at Anathema as if she could pierce through her head and be done with her. Crowley felt cold sweat prickling her skin. __

_ “That was a weaker version of me. This new version will be able to control a Jaeger on my own.” _

_ “What do you mean by version?” _

_ “I’m better now. I don’t need a partner.” _

_ “Every pilot needs one to sustain the neural unload from the Jaeger.” _

A wide smile puffed her cheeks and Crowley’s heart bled.

_ “That’s because every pilot is weak.”  _ She leaned back, her smile dimming into smugness and— there was no other way of describing it but malice.  _ “But keep them coming my way, dear. I will make sure to prove my point as many times as necessary although— the question is if you have pilots to spare.” _

More papers rustled. Crowley felt so wrong and unsettled as if someone took her mind out of her body and put it back in the wrong way.

_ “Returning to the incident. What happened during the neural handshake?” _

_ “I told you. She tried to get in my head.” _

_ “Usually when a neural handshake goes wrong is because one of the pilots chases the R.A.B.I.T.”  _ She paused and Aziraphale’s face kept the smug smile on as if waiting for the punchline she knew was coming.  _ “You  _ made  _ her chase the R.A.B.I.T.” _

Aziraphale cackled, throwing her head back.  _ “Brilliant, isn’t it? You never knew one could do that to another, am I right?” _

_ “Nobody can do that to another pilot,”  _ Anathema reiterated, so devoid of emotion that Crowley felt a sob building in her chest.  _ “Because nobody has ever had such a strong mental presence as to oppress another.” _

_ “Thank you, my dear. I knew there was a reason why I liked you.” _

There were two minutes left of the conversation and Crowley felt as if she was sitting on the edge of her seat. She didn’t glean anything useful from that conversation apart from how wrong Aziraphale was behaving.

A chair scraped on the cement floor.

_ “That’s it, doctor? No other questions? No asking what happened right before Michael fell? How her partner barged into the room and threw me to the floor? Or is what followed after that’s too much to take? Something that should be pushed under the rug and pretend it didn’t happen, hm? Oh, but my dear, what followed after I got back on my feet is the best part! How’s Gabriel’s jaw? I wonder if he can eat left-handed now. Or even pilot. Did you take him out? Put him to the wall and shot him because he’s useless now?”  _ She chuckled, then looked down at her palms and flexed her fingers, her smile growing.  _ “Oh yes, darling, this is the best version of myself you’ll ever see. Give my regards to Gabriel and Michael. I look forward to working with them in the future.” _

The video stopped. Crowley wasn’t breathing. Nobody told her about this. Nobody told her about the altercation and she couldn’t even spare a thought of anger towards Gabriel. She’d have reacted the same if her angel had been in danger.

***

“We’re going to Russia,” Anathema said upon seeing Crowley. She almost hit the doctor as she turned the corner to the hallway leading to where they kept Aziraphale.

She frowned. “Why?”

“I need to do more comprehensive tests which means that I need more pilots. Gabriel and Michael are recuperating and Carmine and Sir Terry are still in Hong Kong. Plus, the Russians have better technology than here.” 

“I’m not leaving angel here.”

“It’s a direct order from Marshal.”

“I’m not going.”

Anathema studied Crowley. “You need a break from all of this. Marshal knows that, too. And we’re going to find out what’s wrong with her.”

Fear squeezed her chest. “I can’t leave her,” she said, voice cracking just a bit over ‘leave’.

“You’re not leaving her. We will be back. I know this is hard to believe, but I have a good feeling about this trip. And I need you by my side.”

Crowley shook her head. “Go. We’ll wait for you.”

“Crowley, we’re both going.” She shook her head again. Anathema sighed and changed tactics. “I know it’s hard to leave her behind, believe me when I say it. She’s my closest friend after Newt and seeing her— not be her is like my skin is scrubbed raw with sandpaper every time I talk to her. I’m just as invested in bringing her back as you are, but you need a break from this. It’s not doing you any good sitting here and waiting. You’re a woman of action and this is doing your head in.”

“I can’t concentrate on my training, I can’t sleep, I can’t pilot a Jaeger, but I can’t leave. It’s so fucking frustrating! I want her back! I want it to be normal again.”

Anathema placed a warm hand on her biceps. “We all do.” She paused, trying to gauge her expression, but Crowley’s head was lowered and the sunglasses covered her eyes. “So please, let’s go find out what’s wrong with her.”

Crowley peered up at Anathema. “On one condition.”

***

The walls weren’t white as one might expect from a lab, but then again these underground spaces were never meant for labs. So the walls were grey, cement-blunt and unpolished. The fluorescent lights bolted into the ceiling glared harshly over the room, chasing away even the smallest shadow from the corners.

She was lying on an immaculate white bed, dressed in a white, plain shirt and lounge pants, the kind that were too thin to keep the warmth in and too fucking white to not get dirty no matter how much care you took of them.

The door closed behind her with a loud clang.

Aziraphale didn’t twitch or even open her eyes. Her fingers were slightly twined on top of her diaphragm and her chest rose and fell slowly.

Crowley was bolted to the floor, watching her angel lay so peacefully on a bed that wasn’t theirs as if this was exactly where she needed to be. She had put her sunglasses in her breast pocket before coming in because maybe like that she would be able to make her angel come back to her senses. It was a nakedness that Crowley got accustomed to in Aziraphale’s presence. She only hoped that coming to her unprotected would trigger something.

“Are you here to ask me more questions?” Aziraphale’s soft voice said. There was a bit of an echo in the room because there was only one bed and a loo at the foot of it. “Or are you here to poke me with your ridiculous machines again?”

She opened her eyes and took Crowley in. “So questions it is.” She closed them again. “Didn’t the good doctor take what she needed from the interrogation this morning?”

“Aziraphale…”

“Mm? What’s the matter, my dear, cat got your tongue?”

The cold shiver those words elicited made Crowley shift her weight from one leg to another.

“What happened to you, angel?”

That garnered Aziraphale’s attention as she sat up, bringing her feet down on the ground. Crowley noticed the heavy manacle around Aziraphale’s right ankle and suddenly it was harder to breathe.

“Angel?” Aziraphale said, eyebrows lifting slightly, and it felt as if she was questioning Crowley’s very sanity in that moment. “Is this a new tactic to get more information from me?” She smiled, but it was full of a calculated coldness that made Crowley want to run and never come back. “Did the doctor send you in? You don’t look like you’re part of my team of torturers. Are you here to negotiate on my behalf, perhaps? Or perhaps this is a ruse. Hmm.”

She stood up slowly and walked from one end of the bed to the other before she began approaching Crowley.

“Angel,” her voice broke again over the word, the woman before her quickly becoming blurry, “this is not you. Please tell me what’s wrong.”

That put a halt in Aziraphale’s step. She cocked her head as if she needed a new angle from which to look at Crowley.

“You’re quite in distress. Are you feeling well, my dear?”

One tear escaped, warming Crowley’s cheek and she swallowed the lump in her throat. How could Aziraphale be so Aziraphale, but at the same time be someone else entirely different?

“Please come back to me.”

“What are you talking about?” She paused, frowning. “Who are you?”

Crowley couldn’t breathe. “I’m—”

“Oh dear, you’re having a panic attack. Are you—”

“Please, angel… I can’t… please come back.” 

She couldn’t see Aziraphale well, her cheeks so warm and wet, but she didn’t care. She wobbled towards her and, for the first time, Aziraphale looked unsure of herself, confused. Just as Crowley was stepping right into her personal space, Aziraphale took a step back, and then another. 

But Crowley  _ needed  _ to touch her. 

_ Needed  _ to know she was real. That this wasn’t a messed up nightmare she was having. It had been almost a week since the last time she had her angel within her arms or anywhere near enough to touch. She  _ needed. _

“What are you— please stay away from me.  _ Who  _ are you?” The distress was colouring Aziraphale’s voice and Crowley couldn’t stop the fat tears rolling down her face or her feet from moving.

At last her fingers clenched around Aziraphale’s v-neck shirt.

_ “Stop!”  _ Fear filled her eyes and in the blink of an eye Crowley had the air punched out of her lungs in a choked gasp as her back hit the ground.

Aziraphale was looming over her, boths hands fisting the knitted jumper (Aziraphale’s jumper) and breathing erratically. She couldn’t see her clearly except in milliseconds before every fresh wave of tears blurred the sight of Aziraphale’s pale face and dirty blond ringlets framing it.

There was no recognition in her angel’s eyes. Only fear and confusion.

Soon the door ripped open and several men came in, dragging Aziraphale off her. It didn’t take more than two because Aziraphale didn’t resist. She kept staring at Crowley as if she was the strangest, most surreal thing she had ever seen and she couldn’t comprehend Crowley’s existence.

“Crowley, are you all right?” Anathema was by her side, touching her shoulders and then face, checking her pupils.

“I’ll get ready,” she said quietly, drying her cheeks. 

She didn’t look back at her angel as she left the room and thus didn’t see the glint of her pair of sunglasses being pushed under the bed by Aziraphale’s foot.

***

She collapsed in the middle of  ~~ their ~~ her room, mouth open in a silent scream, unable to swallow the lump, the pain, the wound in her chest. She clenched the hem of her jumper —  _ Aziraphale’s _ jumper — and screamed and screamed— 

And nobody outside ~~their~~ her room had a clue.


	19. The findings (Present)

**Sydney Shatterdome, 0500 hours**

The drift compatibility room

***

“Did we ever find out what that piece of work garbled all those months ago?” Her arms were crossed across her tank top, her focus resolutely fixed on Anathema behind the only computer in the room they were in.

“No,” said Marshal coming in behind Crowley. She surveyed the room once, not stopping anywhere but on Crowley. And she knew that because her gaze had been on her superior since she made her presence known. “The spectogram had been sent across the planet to any sound specialist we could find, from deep sea to bats, we even fed it to the artificial intelligence that translates brian activity into speech. Nothing. They all came back with either garbled syllables or nothing at all.”

“So we’re not even sure it even tried to communicate to us,” Crowley surmised.

“Sounds to me like you’re in hot water,” the taunting voice said.

Crowley’s eye twitched and she ignored the comment. Marshal’s face was such an oasis void of expression, it was a relief. “But that can’t be it,” Crowley continued. “Not one Kaiju we’ve fought for the past decades has ever synced on our frequency. That’s— how did they do that?”

“And why?” quipped Anathema absentmindedly.

“Those are questions to which we don’t have a concrete answer,” said Marshal gravely.

“Maybe you were warned of your impending doom. Ever think about that?”

Everyone ignored that comment, too. 

“So we have nothing,” Crowley hedged.

Anathema hummed, then, “not nothing. We have  _ something.  _ But we need to scan her again. If my suspicion is right then—” She threw both her and Marshal a wild-eyed glance, skin pale enough from sleeplessness that it accentuated the shadows under her eyes. “I— I’m not sure what we can do.”

The cackle that resounded, staticky over the speakers, made Crowley’s skin break into goosebumps. They’d put her in the room where Crowley had had her first drift test. The only thing separating them was the plexiglass where there had been nothing but the frame of a large window. The room she, Anathema, and Marshal were in was considerably smaller than the other one, but not small enough that they couldn’t have fitted the MRI into the corner, hooked to both power and the fanciest computer she’d ever seen Anathema work on.

“You said you had an inkling as to what afflicts her,” Marshal said, authoritative as ever. “No matter what it is, we need to know.”

Anathema bit her lower lip in an uncharacteristic show of indecisiveness.

“Are you sure you want to find out, dear Marshal?” Not-Aziraphale taunted, her smirk so present in her voice that not looking at her made Crowley picture her face even more vividly. “You might end up terminating the life of your only daughter. Some secrets are best—”

Crowley marched towards the plexiglass and hit it with the underside of her fist.

“Shut up! Shut up shutupshutup!” she growled, inches from the barrier separating them.

Aziraphale’s eyes glinted, honest to whatever god was still out there. That or the fluorescent lights glaring down on them played tricks on Crowley’s eyes.

“Why must I be silenced when the truth is already out there?”

“I don’t know who you are and how you did this to my angel, but when I find out you better take cover because I’ll punch your arse to high heavens!”

“Your angel?” She leaned her head back and closed her eyes. “Hm, sounds vaguely familiar. Is that another feature that I can unlock? It does sound like it has serious combative potential.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Crowley gritted out.

“Tell me,” she changed tone of voice, a flat line that pierced through Crowley, and came so close to the plexiglass that she instinctively took a step back, “how was your vacation up north?”

“How did you—” She whirled around to throw an accusing look at Marshal.

“She ferreted that from an intern, a few days after you visited her.” Was all that her superior offered.

“You let an intern near  _ her?”  _

“We’re spread thin as it is. I had no other choice.”

Not-Aziraphale chuckled. “Mousy girl, that. She opened up to me like a flower. Poor thing refused to let me out.”

She felt her face do complicated contractions. “What did you do to her?”

“Nothing,” Anathema intervened, “physically.”

“The intern resigned after that.” Marshal filled in.

“You haven’t answered my question, dear—” she looked Crowley up and down, “girl. Hm, that sounds vaguely familiar, too.” She narrowed her gaze. “I wonder why.”

The underside of Crowley’s fist hit the plexiglass again. “You will shut up this instant. Stop talking with her voice. You’re not her. Never will be. And mark my words, I’ll hunt your arse down as soon as we know what you did to her.”

It didn’t matter to Crowley that she hadn’t the faintest idea what they were dealing with. She half hoped the result would be something she could put her fist through.

Not-Aziraphale’s palm came up right where Crowley’s fist was and she pulled hers back as if burned, but didn’t step back.

“Do you promise?” she purred. “Do you promise that you’ll hunt me down and destroy me?” Crowley shivered without meaning to, unable to break the dark gaze. “Because I’d like to see you try.” She grinned toothily.

“Anathema,” she said, turning towards their neuroscientist, “what’s the plan?”

“We’ll need to do an MRI scan and then—”

“You haven’t answered my question!” Not-Aziraphale raised her voice. “Or are you ashamed of yourself for leaving poor old me here, caged like an animal, poked and prodded like cattle?”

“I had no choice!” But her voice broke over the last word, her fists balled at her side.

“Crowley, don’t listen to her,” Anathema warned.

“Oh, but you did. You had a choice. You could have set me free.” Not-Aziraphale placed both her palms on the plexiglass, eyes shimmering with unshed tears. “But you let them take me. You did  _ nothing  _ to save me; you just ran away with your pet scientist for months without a care about little ol’ me.”

“That’s not true!” Her voice shook. “I tried…” She lost it there for a moment and had to swallow and take a deep breath. “I tried to save you.” A shaky inhale. “But I couldn’t.” 

Aziraphale’s dark eyes held no compassion. “A fat lot of good that did me.” Then emotion flickered in her eyes. “We could have gone away together. Isn’t that what you want?”

Was it?

“Crowley, she’s not Aziraphale.”

Did she ever feel imprisoned there? Did Aziraphale? She never picked up on anything like that from their drifts. There was never regret there. Not from Aziraphale or Crowley. They made the Shatterdome  _ their  _ place. They made the people working there  _ their  _ people. It had never been a matter of finding a better place because in that world such a place could only be found at the core of the battle, right next to the weapon capable of fighting raging hurricanes and coming back on the other side still standing.

“We were free,” Crowley said brokenly, placing her own palms where Aziraphale’s were.

She missed her terribly. So terribly that her chest ached and her forehead leaned against the plexiglass. Aziraphale’s followed.

“We weren’t, my dear,” she said, low and sweet. Her angel’s voice, the soft tones that could lull her to sleep. Crowley whimpered pathetically, soaking that up. “I wasn’t. Please, darling. Please set me free. You owe that to us. You left us here. Please.”

“Ranger,” Marshal’s firm tone broke her from the lullaby. That and the strong grip on her biceps that pulled her back.

She looked up at her superior, whose jaw could have crunched through stone in that moment. A shiver wrecked her body at the realization of what just transpired.

“Oh, come on, Marshal!” Not-Aziraphale griped from behind the woman’s broad shoulders. “I had her eating from my palm!”

Crowley took a shaky breath in, her joints trembling. “I— I need a minute.”

Marshal nodded tightly. “It’s for the best.”

She took more than one minute outside the room to compose herself. Along with the calm came her sense kicking her weak arse for letting that— that  _ thing  _ that wasn’t Aziraphale talk her into something she’d have regretted. Not that Marshal or Anathema would’ve let her free Aziraphale, but Crowley’s blood sang with the surety that she’d have fought both to get her angel out.

Now that she had a bit of time alone with herself, she was disgusted with how weak she had been. How easily she gave into the cajoling.

Just as she felt more in control of herself, two men in white with padded fronts entered the room. She was on their tail and when she caught Marshal’s eye, she frowned. Why did they have padded fronts?

“We don’t want a repeat performance,” Marshal said and there was a distinct tightness to her jaw.

“Did she try to escape?”

“And almost succeeded, my dear,” said not-Aziraphale’s amused voice as she was frog-marched out of the room and onto the MRI table to the side and strapped to it.

“How long?” Crowley asked Anathema as she made eye contact with not-Aziraphale.

“Forty-five minutes. It’s a long process, but it will give us a much more in-depth image of what’s wrong with her.”

“Nothing’s wrong with me,” not-Aziraphale quipped, then her voice became ragged, “it’s you who’re flawed.”

As soon as not-Aziraphale was inside the machine, Crowley sighed in relief. 

“Alert me when you have the results,” Marshal ordered and then left the room.

Anathema patted the only other chair available and Crowley plopped down like her body weighted a ton and her legs were unable to sustain her. In the meantime, not-Aziraphale was singing something, it sounded like garbled sounds, not helped by the loud noise the MRI was making, bits of words and then humming as if she couldn’t remember the words.

But the moment “I’ll come to you blind” filtered through, both Crowley and Anathema stared at each other.

“Is she—”

“Yes, she’s singing that song,” Crowley said quietly, rubbing at her chest because  _ fuck _ did hearing that song hurt. She felt such a bone-deep tiredness permeating her body.

“Hey,” Anathema’s hand covered her knee, “you should get some shut eye. We flew in yesterday morning and you haven’t slept a wink since.”

Crowley grinned. “Same as you.”

A tired smile graced Anathema’s lips. “I can’t sleep when I’m so close to finding out what happened to her.”

“Then you know how I feel.”

Anathema just shook her head and straightened in her seat.

“Hey, can I—” 

She pulled her chair right beside Anathema and slouched in her seat low enough that she could place her head on Anathema’s shoulder comfortably. Her shades had been missing since the previous day, too frazzled and anxious to remember to put them on even if the lights did bother her eyes. Closing them brought much-needed relief.

“Can I hold your hand for a few?”

“We know each other for long enough that you should know the answer to that, you doofus,” Anathema said amused even as she took her hand and threaded their fingers together.

“Yeah, but you also told Aziraphale about me teasing Newt in that tape recorder, so I’m not sure where we stand.”

Anathema snorted. “You were looking for that one. At least it served as a lesson. I don’t take kindly to anyone teasing my mouse like that.”

“But it was innocent teasing,” Crowley grumbled.

“Tell me,” now Anathema’s voice had a weird quality to it, “what happened afterwards? Aziraphale never said anything and with everything that happened, I forgot to ask.”

“Uh, nothing.”

“Mhm. I find it hard to believe when Aziraphale had such a determined look on her face when we parted.”

Crowley shifted in her seat, trying to take back her hand, but Anathema was holding it securely in hers, fingers twined so their palms were pressed against each other.

“Nothing— I care to repeat to the person who instigated that.”

Anathema was silent for a long time. “She didn’t— did you fight? Because that was not my intention. I mean, I know Aziraphale wouldn’t easily fight with someone she holds dear and I—”

“No. We didn’t fight,” Crowley said, feeling her cheeks burn.

“Then?”

“Let’s just say,” she gritted out, “that a punishment… of sorts took place.”

“Punish— oh.”

“Yeah. Oh.” Crowley mimed sarcastically. 

“But you worked it out in the end.”

“Not thanks to you.”

“Well, you could say it’s thanks—”

_ “Not  _ talking about it!”

“Okay, as you wish.” Anathema fell silent for about two seconds. “Still, it must’ve felt  _ really  _ good for you to—”

“Oy!” She glared at her while Anathema grinned unrepentantly. “What part of not talking about it wasn’t clear?”

“It could be fun.”

“Yeah, for you.”

“I could help.”

“I’m not going to discuss my intimate life with you.”

“Why not? I could offer advice. Could be your confidant.”

“As if you’re not Aziraphale’s. Not gonna add to your weird nosy tendencies.”

“Fine, be secretive. Besides, Aziraphale has never told me anything intimate about her relationships, especially with you.”

“Never?”

Anathema shook her head. Warmth unfurled in Crowley’s chest.

“Ugh, stop looking so pleased.”

Crowley chuckled and placed her head back on Anathema’s shoulder.

“I wish we could go back to the time when we sneaked out to the bar,” Anathema said and Crowley hummed. “And let’s not forget that if Aziraphale hadn’t had the forethought of inviting me and mouse, we wouldn’t have witnessed the amount of gay panic you were waddling in. Poorly.”

Crowley grumbled, her hand twitching in Anathema’s. “Shut up. I was trying to figure out stuff myself, okay? You crashed our party.”

Anathema laughed, jolting Crowley’s head. “What party? You were frozen in your seat, gaping at Aziraphale for opening that beer bottle with a fork.”

“In my defence, that was the single hottest thing I’ve ever seen in my life. She was— her hand—” She did some complicated gestures with her free hand, trying to emulate the memory. “There was just a flick of her hand and done. You’d have been gaping, too, if Newt did that.”

“Point.” Then, with a smirk, “though I’d have put my mouth to better use.”

Crowley pulled a face, but didn’t lift her head from the comfortable position on her shoulder. “You two are disgusting together.”

“No more than you and Aziraphale are.”

“Were.”

“Oh, shush. We’ll get her back. Your angel will come back to us. She must.”

Since she was close enough to Anathema, she could say more quietly, “but what if she doesn't.”

“She will.” Anathema squeezed her hand. “I’ll do everything in my power and knowledge to bring her back to us.”

Crowley squeezed back. “I’ll hold you to that.”

The rest of the time they sat in silence. Anathema took her tablet and did whatever she needed to do on it while Crowley dozed off, never quite managing to fully fall asleep because the noise of the MRI was annoying. She was so focused on ignoring it that she didn’t realize when it stopped. It took a hand squeeze to jolt her awake from the not-quite-sleep.

“It’s done and—” Anathema pursed her lips, frowning at the tablet. “I— I don’t understand how— it’s— this is impossible. It can’t be.”

“What? What’s happening? Did you find out what’s wrong with her?”

Anathema took her smartphone and sent a text message.

“What’s happening, Anathema?” Crowley almost shook her.

She gave her a wild-eyed stare. “I— Aziraphale has a— a  _ thing _ attached to her hypothalamus.”

“What.”

“It’s— I don’t— I’ve never seen such a thing in my life. I think it’s— well, considering the past months and her response,” she muttered to herself.

This time, Crowley did shake her, just one shoulder. “What are you talking about?”

“I think it’s a symbiote. It’s— it’s not a parasite because that only feeds off the host and then moves on when the host dies. A symbiote— both the host and the symbiote benefit from the partnership.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“She— but it makes sense.” She was mumbling to herself, looking down at the new scan. 

Crowley followed her gaze and this time the scan had colours delineating parts of the brain and what looked like brain activity, and right there in the third image that showed a lateral scan, a shape too smooth and well-defined to be part of the brain covered half of what she surmised to be the hypothalamus. 

“She heals faster.” Crowley caught bits of the mumblings. “She got injured and healed within seconds. We tried to sedate her, but her metabolism burned through that so fast. Of course of course. It makes sense now. All these changes and the ones before. It was the symbiote. It’s been it all along. How could I have been so fucking blind. How—”

Marshal marched in at that moment, followed by the two men in white. Not-Aziraphale had been quiet for a while, but when Crowley looked over to the MRI, she was staring back at her, expressionless.

“Doctor Device,” Marshal prompted and Anathema launched into a repeat of her findings sans the mumbling and the breaking off mid-sentence to chase another thought.

She left them, her legs taking her closer to not-Aziraphale. This was the first time she was within touching distance of her since she left for Russia.

“Well?” not-Aziraphale demanded. “Nothing to say? No punch flying? You could, arguably, try sharp weapons. A knife— maybe the arms of your shades.” She grinned.

Unconsciously, her hand came up to feel only skin where her shades usually were. She had forgotten that they weren’t on her. The heated discussion with Marshal made her displace them.

“You— that’s where my other pair were. You took them! All those months ago.”

“Oh, don’t be daft. I didn’t. They fell out of your pocket and I felt compelled to keep them.”

The men marched her back in the room she’d been in. There was something about her, now that they knew what they were dealing with that made Crowley feel like she was so close to finding a solution to this. Not-Aziraphale mirrored her pacing on the other side of the plexiglass, and it didn’t weird Crowley out as it would have, if they hadn’t known. It made it easier for her to separate her angel from this thing hitching a non-consensual ride with her. This wasn’t symbiotic, this was a take over so barbaric that Crowley forced herself to ignore that thought.

If she entertained it for too long, she would spiral into a panic attack. And right now Aziraphale needed her to be strong and focused.

“I have to say,” not-Aziraphale quipped after a while, “there’s something about you that… pulls at something inside this host. All this time and I must confess, I still haven’t figured out why that is.”

Crowley stopped in her tracks, frowning because she agreed with her— it. She looked at Anathema who was still talking to Marshal and pointing out images on her computer. 

“Anathema? Why can’t she remember me?” she called out and got Anathema’s attention.

“I— I don’t know. Might be amnesia, she did take a hit to her head when she lost consciousness. Or—” She trailed off, trying to grasp at straws, but Crowley suspected she was thinking about too many things at once to be able to concentrate on this one.

“Or she’s protecting that info,” Crowley said, studying not-Aziraphale’s face, inadvertently trying to find the thread that would reveal the solution.

But.

But she could do that. Find the thread and pull so hard on it that it’d unravel everything. She knew she could. For the first time in a long while, she felt the kind of confidence that she could only feel when in the drift or existing beside Aziraphale. It filled her veins and fuelled her determination.

“Where’s the drift equipment?” 

“You won’t drift with her, Ranger.”

Crowley stepped up so close to Marshal that she could almost feel the corded muscles underneath the military suit.

“I will because this is the only option we have right now that can bring her back. I know how. If she’s suppressing memories of me, whether she does it consciously or not, that means that she’s still in there fighting this thing off. I  _ won’t,”  _ she snarled quietly, “let her down a second time.”

“And,” Anathema added, “she might be able to glean something from the symbiote and help us close the breach.”

Marshal stared hard at Crowley and for a moment there Crowley did falter, but then her superior sighed and took her smartphone to make the necessary arrangements. No matter how at odds Crowley had always been with Marshal, she had to admit that Anathema had been right. She cared about her daughter just as much as Crowley. And now Crowley knew: she had only to push hard enough to make the mountain move. But she also had to give the mountain a logical reason to.

Within the hour, Aziraphale was strapped to a chair and the drift equipment installed. Just before Crowley entered the room, Anathema stopped her with a hand on her arm.

“Are you really sure you want to do this? You don’t know what you’ll find there. She will try to sabotage you, deceive you and maybe even take control of your mind. You remember what happened to Michael.”

“Yes, I do. The difference is that I expect her to sabotage me at every step.”

Anathema studied her, then sighed and let her arm go. “I’ll be monitoring both your vitals and your cerebral activity, if I get even a whiff of cerebrally-induced coma, I’m pulling you out and we go about this another way.”

“Fine with me.”

As she crossed the room to her chair (strapless), not-Aziraphale was following her like a predator was following its prey. But more than that, she couldn’t shrug off the feeling that she was heading in to slaughter. She didn’t try to deceive herself into thinking that not-Aziraphale didn’t know what would follow.

Crowley only hoped that her knowledge of her angel’s mind would be enough to help her.


	20. Cerebral space

***

There was no wall waiting for her, just darkness. It soon resolved itself into a flood of light that forced her to close her eyes and put her arm up to get her bearings.

She was in a… bar. It looked like a tasteful mesh between the bar she’s been recruited in and an American 70s movie with gangsters. That part must have come from Aziraphale because she was the only one between them who went through a 70s movies phase during her teen years. 

The plateau in front of her — because she was standing on a stage — was fanned out in little round tables covered in red satin cloth on two levels. Men dressed in tuxedos and fancy suits smoked cigars, the cloying plumes swirling lazily in the light, their hats either sitting on the table or on their heads.  _ Femmes fatale  _ dotted the sea of black and white and red with their own scintillating dresses, topaz blue, canary yellow, forest green, and other garish colours.

Then the band at her back started playing and she found herself singing a languid jazzy song about love and heartbreak and hope that she couldn’t have possibly known.

It took her the first two lines to realize that this must be Aziraphale’s memory of sorts. She scanned the crowd, looking for her, but she was nowhere in sight.

Was she playing an instrument?

Only men met her gaze when she looked back.

She came to the second encore of the song when the doors to the bar opened and in sauntered Aziraphale.

If whatever muscle memory kept her singing without a hitch wouldn’t have kicked in, Crowley would’ve been rendered speechless by her angel’s presence.

As it were, only her gaze followed Aziraphale’s every move as she confidently and elegantly sailed down the few steps leading to the only unoccupied table in Crowley’s direct line of sight on the lower floor.

She was  _ a vision.  _

Her long, glittery white dress hugged her voluptuous body, every roll and dip and soar. The white fur bolero was the first thing to come off and be placed delicately on the back of her chair. The purse was next, but on the table. It was a palm-wide square thing that couldn’t have had more than a handful of items inside (including a 9mm Glock, if the atmosphere of the bar was taken to the letter). She took a seat.

The side-gap in her cocktail dress revealed a cream-white thigh that would have made the most virtuous and dangerous man kneel at her feet. And speaking of them: her white heels were moderately high, not enough to threaten her balance, but high enough to lend her ankles all the attention they deserved.

And  _ oh heavens _ did Crowley lavish them in attention.

But then Aziraphale drew her legs behind the long tablecloth. Which was good, because that meant that Crowley’s eyes snapped back up to the tasteful V of her dress and the length of shimmery small diamonds at the base of her neck which formed a single line and ended in a teardrop diamond nestled between her generous breasts.

If that wasn’t a memory — or whatever it was — then Crowley was sure she’d have lost all of her composure by then.

To add to the whole tableau, Aziraphale took out a black cigarette holder from her purse and worked calmly, meticulously, to place the short cigarette at the other end. 

And then, something straight out of a movie or music video happened.

Just as her free hand went to the opening in her purse to, presumably, take out the lighter, at least half a dozen men — if not more — crowded behind and at her sides, offering their lit up lighters.

She smiled, and good thing that there was a pause in her song because Crowley would have held her breath even if she needed to sing.

The deep, deep red lips stretched and her cheeks puffed out. It wasn’t adorable. It was a power-move in Crowley’s books. Aziraphale was in control of the situation. Not intimidated. Amused.

Her hand dipped into her purse, the pause all but forgotten, and took out a glossy white lighter — the only design on one side a small golden circle — its top fashioned out into a white wing.

And then she flickered the top off and inside, instead of the usual igniter, there stood a smaller wing. Black.

She lit her cigarette and took a lungful. The men were disappointed by the act, but accepted their defeat with tact.

Crowley couldn’t stand it anymore. She plucked the mic and moved towards her angel.

She was dressed in a simple black dress that reached her ankles, but had gaps on both sides of her legs, and sleeves that ended in the shape of a petal, its tip touching the base of her little fingers. Stripes of silver were gliding like waves across her body reflected by the light. Even though her front was covered, the fabric gathered in elegant folds across her chest. The back of the dress was missing, but it was kept in place by a silver chain that formed a T, the teardrop diamond at the end continuously grazing her tailbone as she walked. 

The song was coming to an end, and she planned to be there by Aziraphale’s table when it happened.

Not once since she came into the bar, did her angel even glance at her. It was as if she was part of the decòr. Unimportant. Forgettable.

She was going to change that.

She sang the last note and the whole bar applauded her and the band. That was when Aziraphale deigned to look up at her.

“Dance with me, sugar,” she said, voice smoky and lascivious.

She took Crowley’s hand, the cigarette nowhere in sight, and dragged her towards the stage where there was a bit of free space.

“Sugar?” 

But she never received an answer as she was twirled forcefully from one side to the other and touched without reserve to the point that Crowley felt distinctly uncomfortable.

“Let go of me. I said,  _ let go!”  _

Instead of heeding her, Aziraphale dipped her low, the room cheering and applauding obscenely. Her blood froze in her veins when Aziraphale grinned sharply down at her. So familiar (and hateful) a grin. The moment they were back on their feet, Crowley pushed her with enough strength that Aziraphale unbalanced and fell back.

“Where is she?” Crowley gritted, pointing the 9mm Glock that miraculously appeared in her hands at not-Aziraphale.

The woman on the floor guffawed a throaty laughter at that.

“Please, darlin’, put that down before you hurt yourself.”

“Bring her back!”

“But was she ever here, hm?” She made no move to get up. “Tell me, sugar, do you really have the stomach to shoot your angel? Here? Will you be able to live with yourself knowing that you put your angel in a permanent coma?”

Crowley’s Glock was shaking so violently, she almost lost grip of it, which was stupid and impossible. Guns didn’t shake— 

“Give her back! She’s not yours!”

“My, are you saying she is yours?” It pained Crowley so much to see that dark blonde eyebrow lifted, knowing that it wasn’t Aziraphale who did that.

“That’s for her to decide.” She gripped the gun tighter and the shaking became minimal. “Now give her back!”

“No can—” What looked like an impromptu coughing session shook Aziraphale’s body. “No! No no no!”

Crowley frowned, unable to decide if it was a ruse to get her to let her guard down or something was happening. The answer to that came a few moments later when the coughing stopped.

“Crowley?”

There was a trickle of blood in the corner of her mouth which she wiped with the back of her hand. The  _ thing _ never uttered her name. At any point. It used all the endearments it could pull from Aziraphale’s memory, but never her name.

“Angel?” she croaked. Her heart was in her throat. She knew she wouldn’t be able to withstand many more mind games. If this wasn’t— 

“Yes, Crowley, it’s me. Not for long, though. You need to leave! You’re not safe here!”

She was kneeling by her side, Glock abandoned somewhere to her left. Her hands hovered in the air, wanting to touch her angel so much, but being afraid— afraid that it might all be an illusion, something cooked up by— 

Aziraphale hugged her tight, one hand going in her stylized mohawk, and breathed her in even though they both knew that they smelled of nothing and it was only through memories that they could.

“Goodness, my dear, I missed you so much!”

Crowley was shaking so badly, her own arms gathering Aziraphale as close to her as she could.

“Breathe, love, breathe for me,” Aziraphale gently coaxed into her neck.

The logical thing to do was to let go and allow Crowley the space necessary to fill her lungs with air. But guess what? Neither were going to, and Crowley sure as hell didn’t need space to breathe when her angel’s perfectly soft and coaxing voice allowed all the oxygen she needed into her lungs.

“There you are, just like that, breathe. You’re doing so well, my darling.”

“I missed—” she gasped, still not fully in control of her breath, “I missed you so much, angel! So fucking much I— I—”

“I know, I know. I won’t let it hurt you. You’re more precious to me than life, my love. That’s why you need to go back. Leave this place. She— It will try to take control of you.”

That was when Crowley pushed back and gave her angel what she hoped was the most confrontational look she had in her possession.

“Don’t argue with me on this,” Aziraphale warned, even as her palms were framing Crowley’s face, thumbs caressing her cheekbones. “You need to go back to safety.”

“Not without you. I came here to bring you back. I won’t leave empty-handed!”

Aziraphale was shaking her head. “You can’t. It’s— it’s too strong. It took everything I had in me to keep it from prying into us, from knowing who you are, what you mean to me, but— it still found bits and pieces.”

“But I can—”

“No. Not when it uses me to get to you. The only way to stop it is to kill me, but even then it will try to latch onto you… somehow.”

Crowley shook her head vehemently. “I’ll never kill you.”

There was a sad smile grazing Aziraphale’s lips. “I know. It knows. It will continue to taunt you with that until you break. That is why, please go back. I don’t— I wouldn’t forgive myself if something were to happen to you or if it got under your skin enough to make you—”

She should have expected the change in scenery. The ripple in their minds preceded it.

She should have also expected the hand that was inching back into her hair to grab a fistful of it and plunge her head into a well filled with spring water.

They were on a green hill, fat, fluffy white clouds glided by unhurriedly. Crowley had a pair of ripped denim shorts and a tee that was barely covering her middle. Her hair was braided into two braids that were now soaking in the water as she struggled against the strong hand keeping her there.

She needed air. There wasn’t enough. Not enough.

The water was so cold and it felt as if it was sticking to her face, trying to get inside her from every possible opening. Her body convulsed, an electric shock passing through her that made her lose a mouthful of air that hurried up to the surface to escape Crowley’s plight.

Where the hell did that shock even come from? It certainly didn’t come from within.

She fought and fought and fought.

Why did it all feel like a dream, so far away as if it was happening to her body and not herself? As if her body could move around without her, could suffer without her feeling a thing. How could that be possible?

Where was that hill even from? Nothing matching that could be found in either memories.

Impossibly, in the inky depths of the well, flashes of images moved past her eyes, too fast for her to discern anything. And was her oxygen-deprived brain imagining things? Were the depths trying to reach for her, pull her in? 

She needed to stay alive. Needed to find a way to get out of that.

And that was when she realized that this was her mind, too. She could control that space as much as Aziraphale or the symbiote.

_ “Aziraphale!”  _ She shouted, knowing that she would be heard as solid as the hand that was keeping her head underwater.

A scream was heard, watery and muffled, and immediately after, Crowley was pulled violently back. She coughed her weight in water most probably, breathing lungfuls of sweet, sweet air.

“Crowley! Are you all right? I tried to break through, save you, but it wouldn’t let me, it wouldn’t— breathe please!” 

She kept coughing and then, out of nowhere, laughter bubbled along with it.

“My dear, are you quite all right? Why are you laughing?”

Crowley laid on her back, just breathing, grinning at the blue sky like a fool. A vindictive fool with a plan.

“What are you—”

“Angel.” She sat up. “Thank you for saving me. Again.”

Aziraphale frowned. “Are you—”

Crowley winked, then shook her head, trying hard not to think about the plan. If Aziraphale knew, then the symbiote would. It already knew about them. Her presence there, their minds melding together, there was no way Aziraphale could have allowed Crowley in and not have opened herself up completely. The fact that Aziraphale had put everything into protecting Crowley from the symbiote created that wall which explained why Crowley couldn’t drift with her back then.

But something must have changed now, if she had been allowed in.

“I’m ready,” Crowley said, getting on her knees.

“Ready for what?”

“Let it back in.”

“What? Crowley, are you sure you’re all right? It tried to  _ kill you.” _

“I’m sure. Bring it on, angel. I got it. Trust me.”

Aziraphale frowned and Crowley waited patiently. Now that she had a grip on herself and the situation, it was easier for her to feel the other presence, constantly prowling just behind the flimsy excuse of the sky.

“It will hurt you.”

“It will, no matter what you do. Or rather,  _ despite  _ what you do.”

“What are you saying?”

“Nothing.” Crowley grinned, letting the edge of it be visible to her angel.

Aziraphale studied her face some more. “No. I won’t allow it. You need to go back. Now, while you still can. Please!”

“You and I both know that we’re two stubborn women who won’t listen to reason until it hits us.”

“Until it’s too late, you mean to say,” Aziraphale muttered, lowering her gaze.

“Hey,” she said softly. “Angel.” Crowley had to lean her head to the side to make eye contact with Aziraphale. She took her hands in her own, squeezing them in reassurance and Aziraphale smiled weakly at her. “I never made you any promises because I didn’t think there was any need for them. Which, now that I think about it, it’s stupid, considering the world we live in. But I think it’s time I made one of those.” She was still grinning at her beautiful angel.

Aziraphale’s eyes were shimmering. “That doesn’t sound good.”

“It does. As good as it can get. Now, I promise I’ll always protect you, no matter what. You deserve a world in which you don’t have to worry about tomorrow, a world in which you can be happy. You deserve so much, my angel, so much and if I could I would serve the entire world on a platter for you. But I don’t have that kind of power. So the only thing that is in my power to give to you is me. 

“Little old me.” She chuckled. “I will always be yours, no matter how this whole fucked up situation pans out. If we win the war or die trying to, you will always be the better half of the both of us— no. You are. No arguments there.” She placed her finger on Aziraphale’s lips.

_ You know that’s not true, my dear.  _

Crowley’s cheeks were hurting from how much she was grinning.

“I said no arguments. I need to make you this promise.”

But her fond exasperation melted into one of pain.

“Crowley, it’s—  _ arrrgh,  _ trying to come back. No!” 

The veins on her face became black and she squeezed her eyes and bent over in half with how much she was pushing back against the strong presence.

“I won’t be able to hold— hold it ba _ aargh!”  _

“Don’t fight it, Aziraphale. Let it through.”

“Silly host,” not-Aziraphale said as she straightened up. 

Crowley regarded the thing that was wearing Aziraphale’s face with cool detachment. She needed to be strong for this. Fortitude of character and all that jazz main characters in blockbuster movies were all about. This was her blockbuster movie moment.

The thing about her moment was that it wasn’t going to be a true heroine blockbuster one. Not like the media portrayed it.

Crowley had lost her innocence the moment she hit the streets at the age of fourteen. No one had looked for her. Good riddance. To both her innocence and family. 

She lost her kindness after a few months of living on the streets. Those children she took in didn’t count. Not now. They had been a whim, and like every single one of Crowley’s whims, they always ended badly.

Crowley kissed not-Aziraphale with a sort of bated breath. Not-Aziraphale was shocked by the turn of situation, unable to decide what kind of response  _ that  _ required. Crowley could feel the thoughts running wildly, firing on all pistons. She wasn’t hurting it/her, and whatever she was doing it actually— made it/her feel good.

Slowly, she got both of them up and started walking not-Aziraphale backwards. Then, with practiced ease that could only come in her mind, she turned not-Aziraphale around and bent her over the well, head submerged in the cold water. The struggle began as soon as the symbiote realized what Crowley had been planning all along. 

And it  _ fought.  _ Viciously.

Crowley had to apply mental pressure twice as much as she ever had just to keep not-Aziraphale from dislodging her. It was so harrowing, feeling Aziraphale’s body representation struggle beneath her hand and knowing that the guilt would torment her for weeks if not years after this was done. 

That was,  _ if  _ her plan worked.

She was at her wits end; she felt her energy slowly seeping out of her, her strength weakening with each passing second the symbiote wasn’t going down.

But she wasn’t waiting for it to die. Oh no. She was after something much more damaging for it.

_ C-Crowley? _

_ I’ve got you, angel. Trust me. I do. Hold on for just a little bit more. _

_ Oh. _

_ Yes. You saw it, too. _

_ I did. _

_ We’re getting rid of this alien for good. _

She felt it when the inky tendrils connected to not-Aziraphale’s face because the body beneath her shuddered and then went lax. The well and Aziraphale disappeared and Crowley felt so dizzy, drained completely of any kind of energy left.

She didn’t even have time to draw in a relieved breath because she fell into blissful darkness. 

***

Aziraphale had time to turn her head to one side before she emptied her stomach. She grimaced both at the vile taste in her mouth, but also at the dark grey slug within the refuse of Aziraphale’s stomach. 

She saw her mother come rushing in, and then she realized that there was nothing at the other end of her connection. She turned her head only to see Anathema at Crowley’s side, checking her pupils and talking to the two paramedics that had a stretcher between them.

“Crowley?” she croaked, her throat hurting from the earlier action.

“Aziraphale,” her mother said, so much emotion in that word that her head snapped back to her and the onslaught of emotions hit her full force.

Living for so many months keeping a wall between the last bit of herself and the foreign entity that had taken over her own body, had made her forget how to parse through them, how to keep them under control.

But her mother was not in control of herself, either. She made fast work of unbuckling the belts keeping her hands in place and was engulfed in her strong embrace.  _ Goodness,  _ but she had missed her mother so much! She had always strived to be like her, to always be in control of her emotions because that was what was required of a leader. And Aziraphale would have, one day, taken her place at the command. She needed to master complete control of herself.

That did not mean that Aziraphale never indulged in emotions. But she never did so freely and without reserve.

After all, she needed to make her mother proud and show the people working there that she could lead them.

But this Marshal almost crushing her in her arms was so far from the title that Aziraphale broke down and cried herself silly into her mother’s shoulder, grabbing fistfuls of her suit jacket without caring about the creases she was leaving behind. All the while, her mother’s soft voice encouraged her to let it all out because it was okay, she was safe, finally.

She didn’t understand that she could still feel her Crowley until she felt a distinct kind of inner warmth being gradually pulled away from her chest.

Aziraphale looked over her mother’s shoulder, blinking away tears and trying to make heads and tails of what she was seeing.

“Crowley? No! Crowley! Bring her back! She’s— I need her, please! Bring her— she’s—”

“Sh, sh,” her mother tried to calm her and she noticed that her eyes were red-rimmed and she looked far older than she remembered her to be. “It’s okay. They’re taking her down for a check up.”

Aziraphale was shaking her head, her childish stubbornness shining through. “No! She’s staying with me. Please, I need her by my side! You don’t under—”

Anathema blocked the view of the two paramedics taking her Crowley away from her. She offered a paper cup with a tired smile.

“If you drink this orange juice, I’ll personally take you to where Crowley is.”

Aziraphale frowned at her, then at the cup, trying to grasp at the whirlwind of thoughts roaming free in her head. She had trouble concentrating on anything but the mounting panic that she’d never see her beloved ever again.

But the command was simple: do this, and then she could see Crowley. So she drank the entire cup and then her mother unbuckled the belts at her ankles and was helped up. In the meantime, another person came in with a wheelchair and she gratefully took it.

Madame Tracy had hooked Crowley to an IV drip and was checking her watch as one hand was pressing over Crowley’s wrist. She turned a kind smile to them when they entered.

“She is sleeping, dearie,” she explained as Aziraphale pushed herself up and refused any extended hand from either her mother or Anathema as she made her wobbly way to the bed. “She was exhausted, the poor darling. Better we let her sleep it off.”

“I’m staying here,” Aziraphale said quietly, gingerly sitting on the edge of the bed and taking Crowley’s hand in hers. She always had bad blood circulation, so if her fingers were so cold, her feet must be, too.

“Aziraphale, we need to debrief you on what happened.”

She turned a heated glare towards the one who spoke which turned out to be her mother.

“I won’t leave her side.”

Her mother exchanged a cryptic glance with Anathema.

“We do have the alien entity,” Anathema said. “And Aziraphale could also benefit from a bit of rest. She’s highly emotional right now, so she wouldn’t be able to give a concrete, factual report, even if she tried.”

Marshal sighed, tiredness clinging to her like a heavy cloak, and turned to Doctor Tracy. “Alert me when they wake up.”

“Sure thing, dearie. Now please leave my patients to rest.”

She ushered Anathema and Marshal out of the room, for which Aziraphale was grateful as she looked down at her love, so peaceful, though pale, in her sleep. Her own heroine. Her chest ached with warmth and love. How did she do that? How was she able to make Aziraphale feel like the most powerful woman on earth and at the same time so vulnerable she’d cripple over in a breeze? It— it scared and excited her in equal measures.

Crowley’s hand was dry and cold, but it was gradually leeching off warmth from Aziraphale’s.

This woman. A whirlwind of emotions barely kept in check. And Aziraphale had allowed her to waltz right into her heart and then she locked the door herself.

“Dearie,” Doctor Tracy interrupted, “I suggest you—”

“I’m sitting here.”

“Yes, sweetie. I wasn’t going to suggest you take another bed. Here, let me help make space for you here. It will be cramped and your side will probably fall asleep, but I’m sure that’s something you can live with.”

Aziraphale smiled and nodded and they both moved Crowley to one side of the bed so that Aziraphale could climb in and pull her safely into her arms. A deep sigh and some mumbling from Crowley, and she melted right into Aziraphale. It didn’t take long for her to follow Crowley, her mind still very much focused on the weight in her arms and not what happened earlier or during the previous months.

*** 

In Aziraphale's dream (the first in months) she was lounging on a homemade swing with Crowley in her arms, both watching the sun set over their orchard. There was not much to it, at least not that she could remember because she was woken up by warm breath and sweet kisses on her neck. She dipped her head and kissed the bridge of Crowley’s nose which made her smile and press her lips to Aziraphale’s.

They didn’t make out for long before Doctor Tracy called out to them from behind the curtain.

After that, Marshal and Anathema were alerted to their conscious state, a full ten hours later. She should’ve known that once they stepped out of the Medbay, they wouldn’t have a second alone with each other or even a second of respite.

When Crowley was asked by a more energetic and attentive Anathema how she brought Aziraphale back, recorder whirring quietly in her hand, Crowley simply drew a circle with her finger in the air.

“Use words, doofus,” Anathema said with fond exasperation.

Aziraphale would have chuckled if she wasn’t talking with Marshal. They were back to being in control of themselves and her mother looked like she had had a few hours of rest, if not sleep.

“It’s simple,” she heard Crowley as Marshal was waiting for her answer. “Since this was a symbiotic relationship, then that meant that the parasite—”

“Symbiote,” Anathema corrected.

“Yeah, that, parasite.” Her bastard darling was definitely smirking and a side-glance revealed Crowley pushing up her shades. “So I had to find a way to disconnect it from angel’s mind.”

“How did you manage that?”

“Aziraphale, you’re distracted,” Marshal called her attention, perhaps more gently than she would’ve, if they were in any other place but Anathema’s own office-slash-lab.

“I made a close circuit,” Crowley said, doing the same invisible circle.

“I am terribly sorry, mother,” she said, wanting, for a second, to correct herself on that slip, but her mother only smiled.

“She is back.”

“Yes, she is. And she brought me back.”

“How do you mean, a close circuit?” Anathema was asking. “Like in physics?”

“Exactly like in physics.”

“So you— linked it’s consciousness back to it?”

“Not really. More like subconscious — if this thing even had one, it felt like one to me — linked to the conscious.”

“Fascinating.”

“How are you feeling?” Marshal asked.

“Tickety-boo.”

Crowley snorted and Aziraphale threw her a close-mouthed grin which was mirrored by a toothy one on Crowley’s side. Gosh darn it but she wanted to hold her hand and pull her back into her arms.

“As amusing as it is to watch you be in love with someone who respects and appreciates you like you deserve, we need to focus, my dear.”

It wasn’t often that her mother used endearments with her. It hadn’t happened in years, so this felt like it should be immortalized. Both the words and the soft expression on her usually hard or poker face.

“I agree. Where were we?”

“How did it happen?”

“It was after the mission in the Tasman Sea when we waited for our pick-up in Jackson’s Bay. A Skinmite got somehow stuck beneath a torn bit on the right collarbone area and since you were an hour away from us, I decided to go out and inspect the damage.”

“The Protocol shouldn’t have allowed you to.”

“That was the bit that seemed to malfunction. Our drift became unstable and the computer readings showed that area as the one causing these defects. I thought that I could do something to at least stop the problem from becoming worse. I do have a mechanic’s training,” she felt she needed to point that out and at the same time remind her mother that she was more than capable of taking care of her Jaeger until more expert hands could come in. 

“Yes, of course. I do remember your four-month break.”

Aziraphale picked invisible lint from her comfortable trousers.

“Well, I went and inspected the problem. That was when I found the dead Skinmite. It must have died at some point after the battle, but not before it ate through some circuitry that also interfered with the right arm’s functionality. I remember I managed to rip off the material on top of my forearm. The area on the Jaeger I was inspecting was pretty mangled, as I recall.”

“So it got to you through your blood?”

“I suppose so.”

“No test picked up any abnormality.”

“From what I gleaned, this kind of symbiote camouflages in the host’s bloodstream until it reaches the nervous system and takes control of it.”

“Aziraphale, what you threw up on the floor was at least two thumbs wide and an index finger long.”

She nodded, not thinking too hard about that because it was still something she hadn’t fully made peace with. “I think that unless it is removed from the host, it mutates the host’s blood cells to act as independent micro-symbiotes. It’s also what helps the host regenerate itself and survive in harsh environments.”

“But you said the Skinmite was dead.”

“It was. Impaled through by a jagged plate. I believe that that was too much damage for too long in an alien environment for the symbiote to be able to regenerate, so it was slowly dying away until I came in.”

“So this alien was transmitted to you through blood. That means that it used you to grow and then, when it reached maturity, it took control of you.”

Aziraphale nodded.

“My only regret,” Crowley said, “is that I didn’t get to punch it like I promised.” 

They grinned at each other. Marshal’s attention fell on Crowley then.

“You said you know how to close the breach.”

She nodded, all traces of good humour gone. That launched a lengthy conversation about parameters, what their side had and what to expect from the other side. It devolved into a full conference with other key elements, like the other pilots, including Carmine (who had her arm in a sling and her leg in a cast) and Sir Terry, Newt, and a few other engineers. As such matters went, they argued three-fourths of the time (Aziraphale did not agree for her mother to pilot Apocalypse Four alongside Sir Terry, but her protests were ruled out in the end) and the remaining one-fourth was used to hash up a plan.

Then the vicious fight took place at the bottom of the ocean.

Aziraphale had never had a panic attack in her life, but she went into a full-blown one when Apocalypse Four and his pilots exploded, taking a Kaiju down with them. Crowley struggled to separate her angel from herself and keep them focused at the same time.

_ Aziraphale. _

_ Aziraphale! _

“Angel! Breathe with me!  _ Fuck!”  _ The hit shook them like they were ragged dolls. The arm sustaining them and the magnetic boot-pads were the only things that stopped them from being flown around like that.

She took gulps of recycled air, her face drenched in sweat, eyes unfocused, and her mother’s last words on repeat.  _ I’ll always be with you.  _

Divine Retribution took down the other one, but there were still two more left and both Jaegers took enough damage that they knew they wouldn’t be able to survive for long.

Suddenly, their greatest weapons became metal cages that were a few critical hits away from becoming their tombs.

That was when she heard and felt Crowley’s thought budding to life as if they both helped it along.

It was the craziest plan Crowley had had to date and it had only been a day since her last one. But by god was Aziraphale going to ensure it would be successful.

“Here’s hoping it works, too,” Crowley shouted in her helmet and Aziraphale smirked lopsided, her eyes trained on the Kaiju guarding the breach.

As far as crazy plans went, the rate of success was laughably low, one might even consider it an impossible mission. But they showed those aliens and the world that they could go beyond impossibility and come back not worse for the wear.

The war was finished. It took its large pound of flesh and now Aziraphale could flip it off with both hands.

But that was something she would do later on a hill somewhere because in that moment she was holding onto Crowley (whole and safe and  _ alive) _ for dear life in the escape pod because near-death experiences worked like that.

***

Aziraphale fussed with the stars on her left lapel, the cufflinks, the white shirt tucked into her knee-length skirt. Would it look more professional and serious if she kept her jacket buttoned or unbuttoned? Perhaps she should have gone for a side-sweep of her bangs instead of parted in the middle to create those natural curls. After they recuperated from the mission, Aziraphale decided to cut her hair short. It wasn’t any one event that made her do it, but a handful of them put together.

She sighed in frustration. This was going to be rubbish! Utter rubbish. Why did she let them talk her into doing this? She wasn’t cut out for this.

“My better half is looking as resplendent as ever,” Crowley drawled from where she leaned casually on the door frame.

“Crowley!” She beamed at the reflexion in the mirror.

The soft smile stretched as Crowley sneaked her arms around Aziraphale’s middle and hooked her chin over her shoulder.

“This is ridiculous!” Aziraphale launched the beginning of her complaint. “I feel ridiculous! Why did I let Anathema and Newt talk me into doing this? You should have stopped me.”

“This is your rightful place,” Crowley murmured, nuzzling into her neck.

“Don’t distract me. And no, this isn’t where I belong. Think about it, my dear, I am about to give a live speech worldwide in which I announce the closing of the Jaeger Programme.”

Crowley met her gaze in the mirror, having forgone her usual shades. It was rather poor light in the room, the curtains half-drawn to take off the brunt of the sun. 

“Fitting. Your mother started this programme. It’s only fitting that her daughter should close it.”

Aziraphale sighed, put upon. “Of course you wouldn’t help.”

“I’m quite distracted right now. Sorry for the inconvenience, angel,” she drawled, not one bit affected, one palm shimmying its way beneath one lapel.

“Crowley.” She did try to glare at her and stop her hand, but they both remained hidden beneath the material.

“How long until I can help you out of your uniform?” Crowley murmured heatedly as she placed warm kisses along the column of her neck.

“Five hours, give or take,” she said, the amusement sneaking in.

“Change of plans, I’m kidnapping you now.”

“Behave, my dear.” 

“You’re such a tease.” 

“We’ll fly to London tonight if everything goes according to plan. Anathema and Newt already left yesterday.”

“Mm, the kids, too. We’re returning the British talents back to the motherland.”

“Except two,” Aziraphale said quietly.

She was good at compartmentalizing. After they returned from the mission, Aziraphale broke down in Crowley’s arms and would be unconsolable for many hours afterwards, keeping Crowley close and drenching her shirt in tears and snot. The next day, she had her armour back on, but the cracks were there, the tiredness clinging to her like a particularly sticky veil.

Crowley sighed, and Aziraphale fully agreed with the sentiment, still hearing the echoes of her mother’s words and the subsequent pain as well as the devastation on Zuigiber’s face when she was told the news about her pilot. To this day, they hadn’t heard anything from her. Aziraphale was keeping an ear to the ground, but she wasn’t hopeful.

“Yes, except two.” She squeezed Crowley’s hand, drawing comfort from her beloved. “I asked the reporters to not ask you anything about them. I hope they keep to their word, but just in case, be prepared for some arsehole or other to twist that knife.”

Aziraphale grinned sharply. “Thank you, my dear. You’ve been most helpful.”

“Oh? Didn’t you say—”

“Yes, yes, I did. This is a different matter.”

“I’ll be there, don’t worry, angel.”

“Ready to save the day, won’t you?”

“Even if it takes a crazy plan or two. Anything for my angel.”

Aziraphale turned in her arms and kissed her deeply.

The reporters were on their best behaviour. Aziraphale gave her speech, talked about the heroes and heroines both sung and unsung, thanked the entire Shatterdome employees for the years given to the programme and then took a few questions.

She tried to answer them to the best of her abilities, but they mostly involved political and economical questions to which she was not privy.

Because she had handed in her resignation letter.

This was not a path she felt she could walk. Not after all that had happened. She would still work as a consultant with R&D robotics departments and share her knowledge with upstart companies, but nothing more involved than that. 

Aziraphale Fell was retiring the world from the alien war. 


	21. Future

***

The cottage they found and bought in South Downs was cosy. Big enough for them to each pursue their own hobbies in peace, but small enough that one only needed to holler once to be heard by the other. It took them the better part of the month to finally settle in, between buying furniture and remodelling certain parts of the cottage to fit their tastes.

Crowley was carrying the last box up into the attic for storage, three weeks and a half later, when the corner caught onto the old vanity table that came with the cottage. A vintage collector was coming the following week to take it off their hands. Aziraphale discovered she had a nose for negotiation and business with antiques, and Crowley sometimes teased her in bed about it which almost always resulted in steamy hot sex. Her angel could be quite dominant when she wanted to.

She lost the grip she had on the box as she lost her balance and she, along with the contents of it, sprawled on the dusty floor.

“Fuck!” she cursed loud enough to be heard downstairs. “Angel, you didn’t seal this one off?”

“We ran out of tape this morning! I used the old tape that was already on it,” she called out from the kitchen. “Do you need help?”

“No, it’s fine. The box is intact.” Then she muttered, “my pride is not.”

She tried to brush off the dust on the left side of her knitted jumper, but it didn’t work out well. Of course her angel decided to add more colour to the jumpers she’d knitted for Crowley while in Sydney, and Crowley had to wear the cream one that day. In her defence, it was the softest and warmest of all the others. It also reflected her current mood.

Oh well, she’d just have to steal one of Aziraphale’s worn in jumpers now, wouldn’t she? The pursed lips at seeing Crowley dirty them faster than a toddler were going to be worth it.

She knelt and worked to put all the trinkets and old albums back into the box when her hand grabbed a familiar rectangular-shaped object.

“Huh, didn’t think she still kept these.” Without meaning to, her thumb pressed play and her angel’s voice came through, crackly.

Tape Recording #34

_ I convinced Marshal to come with me. _

_ She needs to see her to believe me, that is what I am convinced of. She didn’t believe me when I told her that I found my co-pilot. But I did. And she’s wonderful. She has potential. A little rough around the edges and— well, she’s very much a street type. She picks fights before they become that. She also finishes fights. There is — might I add — an absence of self-preservation in the way she carries herself. Both a front to protect herself, but also a challenge to anyone brave — or stupid — enough to accept it. Much as I don’t like to admit this, it is a necessary characteristic for the sort of job offer that I will extend towards her. _

[papers rustle]

_ But Marshal needs to be there. She needs to see her because she doesn’t believe me. _

[a sigh]

_ We’ve been at this for four years already. I can see the resignation in her eyes. She made peace with the fact that I won’t ever pilot a Jaeger. Well, now an opportunity arose and I will not — I will not — let it escape my grasp! _

_ I hope that this stranger will see the benefits of becoming a pilot, but she didn’t look like the sort of person who expects things to be handed to her. _

[another sigh, tired]

_ Let’s hope for the best. _

_ End recording. _

Crowley stared at it for a while, trying to parse through that. There was a bittersweet feeling welling up inside her at hearing her angel talk about her mother. It brought back memories of the first time they met. They’d fought the gang members, and Crowley had needed to relocate and lay low for a few weeks after that. She remembered she cursed the pilot for making her life that much more difficult, no matter what she blabbered about drift compatibility and pilot and Jaegers.

She snorted. The Crowley from back then was jaded enough that she considered hitching a ride to another city until things calmed down. Maybe somewhere in-land. But she hadn’t been able to get over the fact that she’d helped the pilot out in the end. So for all intents and purposes, she had done that to herself.

“Lunch is ready!” called Aziraphale.

“Will be in a minute!”

She pressed play again.

Tape Recording #35

_ The offer has been made. _

_ I almost let her run away, but Marshal only needed to give me that look, the one that tells me I could do with being a bit more persistent, more— well, less soft. So I ran after her. She does have quite a long stride. And I did see another side of her, briefly. The kindness she bestows upon others, the worry. She might put up a front, but I know— I know deep down she just wants the world to make sense again. Like I do. And every other person on this planet. _

_ It cemented my resolve regarding her. She’s the one I want by my side when facing a Kaiju. _

_ Well, if she wants me, too, that is. _

_ I made my offer, but she can refuse. _

_ Oh dear. She can refuse. _

_ What if she does? What then? Will I keep searching for someone compatible? Isn’t there an end to this search for me? Because I am not so sure I can continue setting myself up for failure. _

_ Tomorrow. I hope she comes. _

_ If she doesn’t— if she— well, if she doesn’t, I’ll— I’ll— keep searching, I suppose. _

_ I suppose. _

[long pause]

_ End recording. _

Crowley tightened her hold on the tape record, but let it run.

Tape Recording #36

_ She’s the one! She’s the one! _

_ Oh! I feel it! I knew it! She’s the one! _

_ We fought and— and— it was brilliant! So brilliant and we’re compatible, we are, I’m sure of it! She’s perfect! The perfect combination of street techniques and control. She was willing to communicate with me, meet me halfway, push back. I’ve never experienced such a thing! I never really knew how exhilarating combat could be. Not when you both communicate. This is what Carmine has been telling me all those years ago. The rush of adrenaline, the confidence that you can push as far as your partner lets you and they can push as far as you let them. _

_ How marvelous! _

_ Trusting my gut feeling brought her to me. Now I pray that she’ll want to stay. She didn’t seem enthusiastic about it. She looked quite shell-shocked, to be honest, and I fear that when she’ll come out of it, she will leave. _

_ I know she’s not used to staying in one place, if the findings on her are anything to go by. But she might. I trust my gut feeling, and I also trust Anathema’s. _

_ She told me she was drawn to the Kwoon Room and what she saw intrigued her. _

_ Well, Crowley has been intriguing me since we stumbled upon each other. And Anathema— well, Anathema has her own way of finding people. Being drawn to them or places, as she always puts it. I suppose I had been drawn to that derelict building on my way back to the ‘dome. I could have let it go. I certainly understood what the situation was before I stepped out. And that situation had been steadily rolling south, as they say, so I had to. _

_ I did not expect to find myself teaming up with her to fight those goons. Yes, they were goons. Ready to shoot their companion if that meant they’d step out alive or that the pay would double. I’m only grateful that that had not been the case for Crowley. _

_ I thought— for just one second, I thought she was like them. How could I have thought such an outrageous thing? She and those goons are like day and night. They couldn’t have fitted together if someone polished their edges. _

_ I hope Anathema is right about Crowley. I really hope she will choose to stay. Not because she needs to prove a point to whoever she feels she does, not because between the street and the ‘dome with all its rules, the latter is a better option. But because she genuinely wants to fight for humanity’s survival.  _

_ I need her to stay, but I will not force her. It will be her choice, and I mustn’t influence her. _

_ Okay. _

_ It’s decided. I’ll be her friend and patiently wait for her decision. And when that is made, whatever path she chooses, I will graciously accept it. Even if she decides to leave. _

_ Yes. That’s settled.  _

_ End recording. _

She had been concentrating so hard on the tape that she hadn’t heard Aziraphale come up the stairs. It was only the shape moving at the corner of her eyes that drew her attention.

Aziraphale was frowning, the sleeves of her cerulean knitted jumper rolled up to her elbows.

“Sorry,” Crowley murmured, feeling guilty, “I found it among the other stuff and… I pressed play.”

“It’s one of the last recordings I made,” she said softly, kneeling by Crowley’s side. “After that you stayed and my focus was mostly on you.”

Crowley grinned as Aziraphale took the recorder from her hand. “You mean you didn’t talk about me to your most trusted friend?”

“I did. For a few more recordings,” she said as she placed it back in the box.

“Now I’m curious. I wanna hear more!”

Aziraphale, the bastard, smiled as she got up with the box and then placed it under three other non-descript boxes that looked the same. “Consider it my secret diary. You already snooped enough as it is without my consent.” She met Crowley’s gaze. “Whatever shall we do about that.”

That was when Crowley became conveniently aware of the smell of food. “Mmm, smells delicious, angel. Let’s go eat.”

Aziraphale chuckled as she followed her wife down the stairs. “Don’t think you’ll get out scot-free, darling.”

Crowley almost missed the last step.

***

“Are you going to devour me?” Crowley asked, looking up at Aziraphale who was straddling her.

“If you’ll allow me,” she said softly, her hands already making their way up her ribs.

She grinned, loving the hunger in her eyes. Sneaking her hands under Aziraphale’s tank top, she got to  _ feel  _ her wife’s hot body (in every sense of the word). It didn’t take her long to find what she was looking for. Her grin sharpened even as Aziraphale bit her lips softly.

Squeezing the generous cleavage, Crowley pushed up the tank top to reveal one breast which had her lean up and suck on the nub, her other hand squeezing the other, fingers tormenting the nipple. She drank in Aziraphale’s breathy moans, humming in pleasure when her angel’s palms caressed her sides up and down in a way that turned her on like nothing short of her clit being stimulated did. Her free hand snuck past Aziraphale’s stomach. Down her fingers went, threading through Aziraphale’s pubic hair and using her index and middle fingers to tease her inner lips.

All the while she never once paused the attention she was lavishing to her angel’s voluptuous chest.

“Crowley,” she panted, using the back of her nails on Crowley’s sides when they went up. Crowley shuddered and groaned, eyes rolling back in her head.

“If you keep doing that, I’ll come before you,” Crowley said, voice rough and feeling dizzy with how turned on she was. Her knickers were sticking to her almost uncomfortably.

“No, you won’t,” Aziraphale murmured and Crowley bit her lip in anticipation, her hands stopping for a bit. “Keep doing that. You’ll come only when I tell you to, understood?”

“Fuck. Yes!”

She got to work, thrusting two fingers at once and laving her breasts copiously as her free hand was kneading her ass and encouraging her to thrust down onto her fingers. Her breathy moans sounded like honey in Crowley’s ears as she let them guide her hands and mouth.

“Yes, yes, love, just there— there— yes! Harder!”

She was deliberately thrusting now which dislodged Crowley’s mouth. So she focused her attention on the magnificent sight of her flushed angel using Crowley’s hand to get herself off.

“That’s it, let go, angel. Come for me, love, come for me.”

She didn’t. Not that fast. Her hips thrust into Crowley’s hand, her juices sluicing it and smearing her stomach. Crowley made an effort to keep up with the frantic rhythm, her angel’s breasts dragging over her bare chest and neck, distracting her and making waves of goosebumps assault her. 

It wasn’t until the hand that was on Aziraphale’s arse moved to caress her sweaty back that her angel shuddered and came with a gasp.

She took a minute or two to come down, her breath slowly calming down.

“Now,” Aziraphale said, pushing herself to one side and leaving behind only chill air that bit to Crowley’s almost completely bare skin. “You’re only allowed to play with your clit while you watch me touch myself. Please place your free hand under your head, so you won’t be tempted to use it.”

Crowley bit her lip as she shifted into position. 

“No, your left hand,” she said softly, which made Crowley frown. “I want to see the scars as you work it on you.”

Oh.

Crowley obliged. The scars from the drivesuit were almost invisible in low light, but they were there. A reminder of their first Kaiju fight.

Her middle finger was already teasing her clit through the wet patch in her knickers. She wasn’t as much turned on in the beginning, as she was trying to find a rhythm that synced with Aziraphale’s teasing. But after a while, she just let herself go, feeding visual input to her mind and letting that guide her hand.

She soon found her hand beneath the knickers, playing with herself in time with Aziraphale’s hand thrusting in and out between her legs. She imagined that the hand that was playing with one of her nipples was teasing Crowley’s, and soon enough she was panting, her hand working furiously to get herself off.

Aziraphale hadn’t taken her eyes off Crowley, her mouth half open, panting herself, as her hips moved of their own accord. Crowley desperately wished she could touch her, feel her press against her body, but this was part of the punishment her angel devised for snooping into her recorder.

“Angel,” she moaned, feeling her orgasm reaching the peak.

It crashed into her while she was distracted watching Aziraphale come for the second time.

“You were wonderful, my dear,” Aziraphale murmured before she kissed Crowley’s sweaty forehead. “So good for me.”

She melted into the praise and soft kisses and took out the hand beneath her head to drag her wife half on top of her for a deep kiss.

They were both exhausted and even though her angel had it in her to play with Crowley some more and bring her to a second orgasm, Crowley declined and asked for cuddles instead which were given freely and without hesitation.

***

Neither had taken a shower the previous evening, so both of them felt gross when they woke up. It also didn’t take much for Aziraphale to convince Crowley to laze around in their clawfoot tub after they washed the previous night’s exertions away.

“I forgot to tell you yesterday, my dear,” Aziraphale said from within Crowley’s arms, “but Michael called to invite us to London.”

“They found a place?”

“They did. Somewhere in Mayfair. She texted the address. And she also let us know that Gabriel found a job.”

“Did he now.”

“Yes, at a paintball range.”

Crowley cackled so hard that Aziraphale had to lean forward and wait her out.

“And lemme guess, we get free entrance if we play a game with him and Michael.”

“Well, not as such,” she said, reassuming her place. “We’d still need to pay our own tickets. He doesn’t own the place.”

“Don’t they pay him enough? It’s London after all, and a prime location, if memory serves me right.”

“He started last week, darling. He won’t be receiving his paycheck until another week.” Which she suspected wouldn’t be much, considering that he started in the middle of the month.

“So he really wants a rematch.”

“I’m not sure it’s a good idea.”

“Why?”

“You two are so competitive with each other. I’m afraid you’ll end up fighting for real.”

“Don’t worry, angel, I’ll keep a cool head. You’ll be on my team, after all.”

Aziraphale nodded. “Well, we need to let Michael know when we’re able to join them.”

“Not next week. We have that collector of yours coming in to appraise the vanity and if your phone conversation was anything to go by, it’s gonna be a long negotiation process. Besides, I need to take the Bentley to a checkup next Saturday.”

“But you only bought it a few weeks ago.”

“Yeah, and the seller assured me she was in mint condition, but I want to check for myself. Remember that noise she makes right after I turn it on?”

“The one that dies off as soon as the car is set in motion, yes.”

Crowley nodded. “You already checked her engine and couldn’t figure out where exactly it was coming from. And I don’t want to ignore it and let the issue get bigger. It’s still expensive to get parts for her, being a vintage car, and our last paycheck and the rest we haven’t cashed in during the war will cover for any big expense at least until the year runs out, but I don’t want to rely on them. We did agree to put them in savings for any unexpected expense, and this isn’t that.”

Aziraphale hummed and kissed Crowley’s jaw softly. She hummed back and leaned down to press their lips together, then returned her head on the warm towels, closing her eyes as the tips of her fingers tickled Aziraphale’s forearm underwater.

“One of my contacts spotted Carmine in Brazil.”

Crowley didn’t really know what to say to that, so she hummed.

“I received a grainy photo. She looked… good. Healthy. Like I remember her.”

“What’s she doing there?”

“I was told she’s involved in tracking down and stopping hunters who break the law. Hunting and fishing is illegal in Brazil, although there have been reports that the Kaiju blood is restoring our ecosystem.”

Crowley snorted. “At least they were good for something in the end.” Then, “she found a good cause.”

Aziraphale hummed noncommittally. “I still wish she would reach out to us. Any of us.”

“You could reach out to her.”

“I don’t want to spook her.”

Crowley snorted. “You? Spook her? Are we talking about the same—”

She squeezed Crowley’s wrist. “I’m not talking about that. I mean that she might decide to drop off the radar again. She never told us where she went after Sydney, so that means that she doesn’t want to be found.”

Crowley kissed her semi-wet hair while one hand was stroking the side of her angel’s stomach. “Then don’t say anything. When she’s ready, we’ll be here.”

A nod and a sigh was all that she gave Crowley and silence filled the bathroom once again. She loved this aspect about their cottage. It could be noisy, when they had Anathema and Newt over or the prats and their families, but it could also be soothingly quiet. The warm body grounding her right now helped with the soothing part.

“Do you miss it?” Aziraphale asked after a while.

“Hm?”

“The drift.”

Crowley nuzzled softly behind Aziraphale’s ear. “No.”

“You’re lying.”

“We’re alive. You’re whole and safe. And mine. There’s nothing else the drift can give me that I don’t already have.”

“We’re not privy to each other’s thoughts and emotions.”

“That’s what talking is for.”

Aziraphale huffed. “Of course.”

A long pause. The plip of a drop hitting the water in their bubble bath.

The thing that sealed their decision to buy that cottage was the vintage claw-footed tub. It took a few weeks to recondition it, but the wait was worth it. This was their first bubble bath in their new home.

“Do you?” Crowley asked.

“Mm, sometimes.”

She leant back a bit to look at the side of her face that the pale morning light highlighted.

“You do?”

Aziraphale sighed. “It was easy… knowing where you were and how you felt. Yesterday with the vanilla pudding. I could have avoided that if I’d known you were right behind me.”

“But I caught it.”

“Yes, you did, my dear.” She placed a kiss on her cheek. “What I’m trying to say is that we’ve gone through so many drifts that— it feels—”

“Lonely?”

“Well, not quite. I enjoyed feeling you in my head, hearing your thoughts, following your thought processes. I only had to gently nudge one of my own for you to take it in and incorporate it seamlessly in your torrent of ideas and impressions.”

“It was easy, I’ll admit to that. But if I were to choose between that and this, you know which one I prefer the most.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Don’t be a bastard.” Crowley bit playfully at her shoulder and Aziraphale yelped and glared heatedly at Crowley. She couldn’t suppress her grin and her angel’s glare melted into a sigh. 

“Yes, I know which one you’d prefer.”

“See? You don’t need the drift to know me.”

“But it was—”

“Yes, it was simple, it made things simpler, but it also complicated them.”

She didn’t need to see her to know she was frowning. “What do you mean?”

“The drift is— was silence. It was a bridge between our minds to communicate and shoulder the Jaeger offload. It allowed us to fight Kaijus, it made it possible for us to defeat them. But where our relationship is concerned, it didn’t necessarily contribute to it.”

“That is not true! If you remember it was because we were feeding off each other’s drift leakage that our relationship became more intimate.”

“But that was not what supported it afterwards. It wasn’t the core of it, either. It’s true that it made us able to detect potential issues easier, but it also took away the communication. Without the helmets, we were only able to feel each other’s emotions, not thoughts. That made us assume without ever checking to see if it was true. It made us dependent on it and with time it’d create problems.”

“So you are saying,” Aziraphale began and Crowley felt like biting her own tongue because she knew that tone and it spelled trouble, “that you are a better communicator without it.”

Of course she’d go for a low blow. Goodness, her angel was  _ vicious.  _

“I’m not saying that. I’m saying that it was a crutch we didn’t need. We were already forging a strong friendship even before we drifted. Remember that?”

Aziraphale fell silent. She raised her arm from under the thick layer of foam and placed it on the rim of the tub.

“I will concede to that. We were certainly moving towards a beautiful and long-lasting friendship.”

“Yes.” 

“My toes are pruny,” Aziraphale said, wiggling them against the rim. “Perhaps we should get out.”

Crowley hummed, her head nestled perfectly on the towel. “Five more minutes.”

“In five minutes my whole body will be pruny.” She hoisted herself up and Crowley opened her eyes a slit to admire her gorgeous wife as she carefully got out of the tub.

They were wives in front of the law. Anathema and Newt had been their witnesses and Aziraphale agreed with her that they didn’t need a religious ceremony, since neither ascribed to any religion.

“You should come out, too, my dear.”

“Not pruny,” she said, turning a bit on her side.

“Anathema and Newt are coming tonight for dinner and we don’t even have a grocery list!”

“The scandal. Don’t let the papers know.”

“What papers?” Her voice was coming closer. “The whole town will be in uproar.”

Crowley peered one eye open. “You’re pulling my leg.”

“I will, if you don’t get out this instant, darling.” Her smile looked benign, but Crowley wasn’t fooled.

With a gigantic sigh, she reluctantly pushed herself up. “The things I do for you.”

“Yes, yes, now come here.” She kept Crowley’s black bathrobe in front of her. “Quickly, before the warmth goes away. I kept yours near the heating unit.”

She didn’t need to be told twice, swiftly shrugging it on and hugging it around her body. The pleased, almost orgasmic sounds that she made were nothing Aziraphale hadn’t heard before. In higher notes and different intensities, too.

“Such vocabulary, my dear.”

Crowley pulled a childish face and Aziraphale gave her her most unimpressed face right back.

“See if I help you write that shopping list.” 

She followed her angel out of the bathroom, not before pulling the tap, so the water could drain out. She’d come back after their shopping trip and clean the tub. It was one of the simplest and best ideas humans could have come up with, but such a bitch to clean. And Aziraphale already chose her task for the day.

“Nonsense, dear,” she went down the stairs, each step creaking differently. Crowley would learn each one by heart before the year was out. It was one of the many thrilling things in her new life that she was excited about. “We do make a great team, remember?”

“Yeah, me jotting down the ingredients and you dictating them with running commentary on the side.”

“Grumbling won’t help us write that list faster.”

“I’m putting fresh chillies on it.”

That made Aziraphale whirl around, a warning finger between them.

“You’re allowed  _ one  _ spicy sauce, since you’re in charge of making them. And you will use the white bowl with little cartoonish cows for it.”

“What? But that’s the ugliest bowl we have.”

“It was a present, dear. You know it’s bad manners if we throw it out or give it away.”

“But how would they know? Any number of accidents could happen to such an atrocity!”

“First among them has your name on it,” Aziraphale murmured.

“I heard that,” Crowley called as she went to the square, fancy plate in the middle of the island to take the lined notepad and a pen.

“Besides,” Aziraphale continued, “what would Adam’s mother think of us? Such careless women.”

She sighed so long, she coughed. “I thought you were taking a vacation, not another job, upholding our non-existent reputation.”

“What nonsense are you saying, my dear? Now, for the first item on the list, we are definitely out of milk. And the recipe calls for 1L, but you also like your morning scones with a mug of warm milk so that would mean…”

Between Aziraphale’s side-comments and explanations, plus the quips Crowley couldn’t help but make that derailed them into different heated conversations, it took them a bit over an hour to be done with it.

“I took my purse and several shopping bags, you’re dressed decently—”

“I always dress decently.”

“Oh! The keys.”

Crowley dangled them, the keychain hooked on her index and middle finger. “Got ‘em. Come on, angel. The Bentley awaits.”

“I must say, your acquisition was well worth it even with the issue,” Aziraphale commented while she locked the front door.

“‘Course it was.” She patted the hood before she climbed in.

“Really, sometimes I wonder if you know who your lady even is,” her angel quipped as she followed suit.

“Oh, I know who my special lady is. And to show my appreciation, we’ll stop at the new deli on the corner with Kingstone on our way back.”

“My dear,” Aziraphale intoned warmly and Crowley grinned as they tore off. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is it, my friends! We've reached the end of this labour of love.   
> Those tape recorders parts would've been punted into an 'outtakes' chapter along with the bar scene, if I hadn't been agonizing over this story in edit mode for months and hadn't come up with alternatives to incorporate them into the main story.
> 
> Hope you had a fantastic ride and that you fell in love with these two as slow (or as fast) as Crowley did with Az and vice versa.


End file.
